Baylor Line - Spring 2015

Baylor Line the

SPRING 2015 Magazine of the Baylor Alumni Association

2The Case for an

Independent Voice

26McLane Stadium

Pays Off in Year One

35System Reform for Student Debt Crisis

Shining Bright

Shining Bright

Dr. Cleophus LaRue, one of the BAA’s

Distinguished Alums

Dr. Cleophus LaRue, one of the BAA’s

Distinguished Alums

Lessons LearnedBaylor’s Best ShareTheir Past, Present, and Future

Conversations with...Gus BlackshearJoseph CiprianoKent GilbreathJohn Lee HancockDavid HillisWilliam D. HillisDrayton McLaneRebekah Ann NaylorFrank NewportMaria Cribbs OwensJohn RiolaDarrell WardBetty Welch

rememberingBaylor giants

MATT DAWSONJACK LOFTISRALPH STORMMARY MCCALL

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Annual Membership Meeting of theBaylor Alumni Association

MEETING:Saturday, May 30, 2015, 1:00 p.m.Hilton Waco — Brazos Ballroom113 South University Parks Drive, Waco, TX 76701

PURPOSE:Election of o�cers and directors for the 2015-16 year

NOMINATED OFFICERS:President: Tom Nesbitt ’94 (Austin)Treasurer: James Nelson III ’04 (Waco) Secretary: Emily George Tinsley ’61 (Houston)

NOMINATED DIRECTORS:Marie Brown ’92 (Aubrey)Carroll Dawson ’60 (Houston)Wayne Fisher ’59, JD ’61 (Houston)David Hudson ’77, MBA ’78 (Dallas)David Lacy ’79 (Waco)Robert Morales ’93 (Beeville)Jackie Baugh Moore ’86 (San Antonio)Tony Pederson ’73 (Dallas)Keith Starr ’83 (Tyler) David Vanderhider ’06 (San Antonio)Chad Wooten ’03 (Waco)

RETURNING DIRECTORS:Sharon McDonald Barnes ’78, ’80 (Rosharon)Jan Huggins Barry ’72 (Arlington) Babs Baugh ’64 (San Antonio)George Cowden III ’76, JD ’78 (San Antonio)Jack Dillard ’72, JD ’73 (Austin) Roland Johnson ’76, JD ’79 (Aledo) Shelba Shelton Jones ’76 (Dallas)David Malone ’73 (Austin)Matt Miller ’57 (Houston)Jim Nelson ’68, JD ’75 (Austin)James Nortey ’08 (Austin)Fred Norton ’80, JD ’83 (Texarkana)Lyndon Olson Jr. ’76 (Waco)Kent Reynolds ’75, MBA ’76 (Waco)J. Rice ’75 (Dayton)Nicole Williams Robinson ’97 (Garland)Stan Schlueter ’69 (Austin)Stacy Sharp ’76 (Amarillo)L. Wayne Tucker Jr. ’85, MBA ’86 (Dallas)

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BaylorAlumniAssociation.com spring 2015 THE BAYLOR LINE 1

Vol. 77, No. 1Published by the Baylor Alumni

Association since 1946

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERChad Wooten ’03

EDITORPeter Osborne

ART DIRECTOR John Sizing

jspublicationdesign.com

CONTACT INFO General: The Baylor Line

P.O. Box 2089, Waco, TX 76703 Phone: (254) 732-0393 Letters & Comments:

[email protected]

Baylor Line the

c o n t e n t

2 Why We Matter A message from BAA President Keith W. Starr.

8 Workshop Houston Lifts Off Reginald Hatter helps students as Co-director of Workshop Houston.

12 Lessons Learned BAA’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipients refl ect on past and present.

26 Home Sweet Home Did the $266 million McLane Stadium exceed everyone’s expectations? A look at the impact on the university and community. Plus an interview with the stadium’s senior architect and project manager.

34 Drowning in Debt Student-loan default rates have gone up dramatically in recent years. Professors Robert Cloud and Richard Fossey recommend ways to ensure program solvency and protect borrowers.

38 Legendary Losses The passing of four icons—Matt “Mad Dog” Dawson, Jack Loftis, Ralph Storm, and Mary McCall—leaves a void in the Baylor Family.

48 Look Back The last days of Floyd Casey Stadium.

John Sizing

Baylor Line

ART DIRECTOR John Sizing

Baylor Line the Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line the Baylor Line Baylor Line the Baylor Line the Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line

ART DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR ART DIRECTOR

Published by the Baylor Alumni

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

Peter Osborne

Baylor LinePublished by the Baylor Alumni

Association since 1946Published by the Baylor Alumni



Baylor LinePublished by the Baylor Alumni


Peter Osborne

Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line Baylor Line

Peter OsbornePeter OsbornePeter OsbornePeter OsbornePeter OsbornePeter OsbornePeter OsbornePeter Osborne

Vol. 77, No. 1Published by the Baylor Alumni


CHIEF OPERATING OFFICERChad Wooten ’03

EDITOR

Baylor Line

IN THIS ISSUES P R I N G 2 0 1 5 , VO L . 7 7, N O . 1

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Baylor Line, P.O. Box 2089, Waco, TX 76703

12

26

34

38

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2 THE BAYLOR LINE spring 2015 BaylorAlumniAssociation.com

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

THE NEWS THAT THE Six Flags parks in San Antonio and Arlington want to offer discounts to BAA members made me smile because I’ve been on a roller-coaster ride during the eleven months that I’ve had the privilege of serving as the BAA’s president.

I love Baylor. I loved my time here as a student. And I am proud (and a bit relieved) that I’m able to send my son there at a time when many of my fellow alumni have told me they can’t afford to do the same with their children because of skyrocketing tuition and housing costs that will cross the $50,000 annual threshold this fall. That’s a real problem that we need to address as a Baylor Family.

This issue celebrates the Baylor Family. We are saluting four Baylor giants who have passed away in the past few months, with stories written by people who loved them or whose lives were changed by knowing them. After reading these eulogies, I feel like I know them better and understand their contributions. Over the years, the Baylor Alumni Association has honored hundreds of alumni who have made—and are making—a difference in the lives of their communities and the growth of our

university. One of the most prestigious of these awards is the Distinguished Alumni Award and 14 of the past recipients took time from their schedules to refl ect on their careers and their lives (see page 12). I found their comments to be uplifting and valuable — because these Bears represent the best of us. We each can learn from their experiences, and they serve as

an inspiration to those who choose to support their communities and this university—and to those who will make that choice in the future.

A lot has happened since the Transition Vote, including the fi ling of a lawsuit by the University against the alumni association that basically asks us to go away. It’s the culmination of a long, painful campaign by the university to silence our independent voice as the last step in taking over all alumni-relations functions—which was not the desire of past Baylor presidents. But looking back is not my goal for this letter—if you want to learn more about all that, you can either read the “Real Story” issue from last spring or you can fi nd more information in the Litigation Update section of our website.

We began moving forward last September with one simple goal: Re-engage with our member base and engage younger alumni (2008 graduates and later) through our website, through events, and through social media, fi nding ways to address the needs of stakeholders who cross different demographics and have different views of our long-term viability.

To that end, we’ve had a few notable accomplishments that I’d like to share with you:

• We’ve revitalized the website, introduced a regular blog (Line Notes), and revitalized our e-newsletter (Between the Lines) resulting in monthly visits to the website that are more than triple what we were seeing in the fi rst nine months of 2014.• We’ve raised funds for legacy scholarships and to support litigation defense completely outside of our endowment.• We hosted not one, but two well-attended tailgates, on Homecoming Weekend and before the Kansas State football game.• We’re adding member benefi ts that seem to be popular with a range of members, including discounts on tickets to the two Six Flags parks in Texas and to Texas Monthly magazine. In fact, more than two hundred members of the Baylor Family who live in or visited the Dallas area during Cotton Bowl week purchased discount tickets to the Arlington park. We are no longer offering the BAA

Why we matterThe Case for an Independent Voice


JOHN LEE HANCOCK. BA ’79, JD ‘82Screenwriter and Film DirectorBoth of his parents also graduated from Baylor

Distinguished Award Winner: 2009 for a variety of screen-play and directing credits including The Alamo, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, A Perfect World, and Hard Time Romance. Also directed The Rookie, which won an ESPY for Best Sports Movie in 2002.

Since Winning the Award: Wrote and directed The Blind Side; directed Saving Mr. Banks (an American Film Institute Movie of the Year), and wrote Snow White and the Hunts-man. Coming up: The Magnificent Seven (Chris Pratt, Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke), which he was a writer on and The Founder, starring Michael Keaton, which he did not write but will direct this summer. Received the Media & Arts Medal of Service from Baylor in 2014.

Biggest Goal: Keep working.Passionate About: Stories I get to tell.Definition of Success: Having a job that feels like a

hobby.Most Important Lesson: Know yourself and your

strengths and weaknesses.Baylor Experience: Attending Baylor had everything to

do with my success—from the teachers to the friends I made, Baylor brought out the best in me.

Best Decision: Quitting the practice of law and moving to Los Angeles.

Worst Decisions: Any time I didn’t follow my gut.Best Piece of Advice: Judge Wyatt Heard told me “Do

what you love and money will beat a path to your door. It may not be a lot of money but it will be sufficient to the task.”

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD WINNERS UPDATE

Lessons Learned

One of the most important functions that the Baylor Alumni Association provides to its members and their families is recognizing – and telling the stories – of our most success-ful alumni. Over a 48-year period, the Baylor Line has celebrated the achievements of 165 winners of our Distinguished Alumni Award

and also presented awards to and for Outstanding Young Alumni, Retired Faculty and Administrators, First Families, Distinguished Church Service, Meritori-ous Service, Distinguished Public Service, and belief in and commitment to religious liberty (the Abner V. McCall Award).

We’ve continued the tradition in our Line Notes blog of recognizing alumni who are bringing honor and glory to our university in both large and small ways. We thought that in this, our first issue of 2015, it might be fun to ask some of our past winners to update us on what they’ve been doing since win-ning the award and to reflect on their careers. As the responses began coming in, we realized two things: Winning the BAA’s Distinguished Alumni Award is not a lifetime achievement award presented just before being put out to pasture and this will be a recurring feature in the Baylor Line for a long time to come.

Attending Baylor had everything to do with my success—from the teachers to the friends I made, Baylor brought out the best in me.

—John Lee Hancock

Some of our most successful alumni share their experiences and inspiration


We began moving forward in September with one simple goal: Re-engage with our member base and

engage younger alumni through our website, through events, and

through social media, fi nding ways to address the needs of

stakeholders who cross di� erent demographics

and points of view.

03_BaylorLine_SP15.indd 3 4/6/15 10:41 PM



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credit-card program or insurance program but are considering other benefits that we believe you’ll like. We welcome your input.

Why do we continue to fight? Because we believe that we can offer a voice that matters. We matter to Reginald Hatter, a young man whose Workshop Houston program is trying to make the embattled Third Ward a better place. We profiled Reginald in our Line Notes blog on the website in November, shortly after his return from a visit to the White House where First Lady Michelle Obama presented him with the 2014 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.

But what resonates to Reginald five months later?“I’m an African-American male from the inner city

who went to Baylor and didn’t play sports,” he told us in March. “It was exciting to meet Michelle Obama, but to be recognized by the Baylor Alumni Association was huge because the university just doesn’t recognize people of color. All my Baylor friends said the same thing. I graduated in 2003, in debt up to my eyeballs. I came to the Third Ward and sacrificed everything and used what I learned at Baylor to make a difference. And I can point to myself when I talk to these kids whose parents didn’t graduate from college (and many who didn’t even graduate from high school) and tell them I went to Baylor and never played football, and I went to class like everyone else and I got my degree. And you can do it, too.”

That’s why we matter. We write about alumni like Annie Green, who survived a horrible car accident at the end of her freshman year, fought her way back with the love and support of the Baylor Family, and

has emerged from the challenges of terrible memory loss to become a professional artist. We have shared the stories of the author and mentor of young women Dr. mOe Anderson, who has dealt with cancer not once but twice before age fifty-two; retiring dentist Edward Bridgeman and his “lucky bullets”; Pamela Berberich on a popular HGTV reality show; and Forbes 40 Under 40 honoree Brennan Potts. And we helped recent grad Brooke Bonorden crowd-fund an archeological dig that she’s doing this spring in Belize.

Cleo LaRue is featured on our cover and appears in two places in this issue (well, I guess this makes three places). Ralph Storm gave a young African-American from Corpus Christi who had struggled academically in junior college a chance and helped him get a Baylor degree when others had written him off. In this issue, LaRue talks about his relationship with Storm and brings our readers up to date on what he’s been doing since winning the BAA’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.

We view it as our mission to introduce you to the next Cleo LaRue—and the Reginald Hatters and Annie Greens—people whose stories might not otherwise be told. And one of the things I like best about these stories is that we decided to let our readers comment on them, to offer their perspective on issues, and to engage with each other. We’re seeing more and more comments every week—and more and more people sharing our stories on their social networks.

We also view it as our mission to talk about things that the University tends not to talk about in its efforts to market the university across the nation. There is a lot going on at Baylor, but there are also topics that should be addressed outside of conference rooms and e-mail. First and foremost is the cost of going to Baylor and how much debt that Baylor families have to take on to fund their children and grandchildren’s educations. We also want to be part of the discussion around whether the university’s growth aspirations are undermining its long-term financial security and to what extent Baylor should be asking parents and students to foot the bill.

And that’s why we matter. I said at the beginning of this article that it’s been

a roller-coaster year for me (and the rest of the board). I’ve seen my university file suit against us for reasons that many of us still don’t fully understand.

I’ve sat through settlement meetings with university attorneys and leaders where the BAA representatives felt that our concerns were being heard and that terms were being hammered out, only

Reginald Hatter


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to have those points dismissed as if they had never happened.

Members have asked me why this is important. I tell them it’s important because we believe the University—a Christian university—has the moral obligation to keep its word. As painful as it is—and as much as we tried to keep the discussion between family members—it seems that the University is going to force this to play out in court.

Back in 2007, we published a special issue of the Baylor Line called “What We Believe.” In that issue, we celebrated the spirit of Baylor with a statement of the BAA’s core values, which included:

• We believe in the original design of the founders of Baylor.• We believe in the power of higher education to change the world.• We believe in Baylor University’s distinctive combination of academic excellence and Christian witness as a Baptist institution.• We believe in the strength of a community based on transparency, open communication, shared governance, and the free marketplace of ideas.• We believe in keeping a Baylor education accessible for the leaders of tomorrow.

Some members tell me that it’s most important we maintain an independent voice. And other members say they don’t understand why the notion of an independent voice is so important to the BAA and why having one seems to be such a bone of contention between the University and us.

Beyond the core values outlined above, we think it’s simple. Your alumni association was built on the conviction of past university presidents that an alumni-driven independent voice was a critical component of the need for checks and balances in university governance. Perhaps more important today, many of us believe that Baylor alumni have the right to ask questions and to push for rational, respectful discourse over whether the university’s aspirations are undermining its long-term fi nancial security and jeopardizing its ability to provide a top-quality Christian education that’s within fi nancial reach for students and their families.

But you need a place to raise those questions. As we move forward—and we are moving

forward—we will continue to do the following:

• Publish the Baylor Line with more frequency than we have since the Transition Vote.

• Continue to post interesting content on the website and bring you news that will keep you apprised of what’s going on at Baylor.

• Schedule events that will enable you to reunite with old friends, make new friends, and learn something new.

• Raise funds to support scholarships for children and grandchildren of Baylor alums.

• Engage young alumni, who make many of their decisions about what causes and organizations to support within those fi rst few years after graduation.

I choke up every time I walk across the bridge and through the gates of McLane Stadium and then again when it’s time to sing the alma mater. I yelled with pride as I stood on that bridge while ESPN College Game Day broadcast before the Kansas State game, chanting reminders at Kirk Herbstreit about the fi nal score of the TCU game.

It’s days like those that remind me why I agreed to spend the thousands of hours I have over the year, playing some small role in the efforts to defend the legacy of the Baylor Alumni Association and chart a course forward that will keep us relevant. There’s a lot to be done, and I invite each of you—whether you graduated in the past fi ve years or fi fty plus years—to join each of us in this journey.

There is so much good going on at Baylor these days. Let’s work together to keep it that way.

KEITH W. STARRBAA PRESIDENT, 2014-2015

P.S.—One fi nal note: The BAA’s fi nancial situation is stable, thanks to the efforts of Chad Wooten, who notifi ed the board that he will be leaving the BAA though taking a seat on the Board and Executive Committee. Chad has managed this organization through challenging times and without his commitment and efforts, the BAA would be in a very different place. Friend, you will be greatly missed!

I tell members(this fi ght) is

important because we believe the

University— a Christian

university— has the moral obligation to

keep its word.


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t he best thing about the Workshop Houston after-school program being a recipient of the 2014 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award is not that Reginald Hatter

’03 got the citation from First Lady Michelle Obama.Make no mistake about it: That was pretty cool.

But there are two other things that have him beaming with pride.

“I’m really proud that we started as a bike shop and have grown to so much more,” Hatter says. “But I’m even more proud of Robert G., who was in sixth grade when I started here. He was illiterate — and had a limited vocabulary and behavior issues that we

couldn’t start to address until we realized that he couldn’t

read. There were eight

kids in his family and none of them — or their mother — had graduated from high school. Robert gradu-ated from high school (in 2014) and started college in January.”

But Hatter also says that the recognition he got from the Baylor Alumni Association in the form of a Line Notes blog post also ranks at the top of his list of great things that came from the recognition.

“I’m an African-American male who didn’t play sports at Baylor, so to be recognized by the Baylor Alumni Association was huge because the university just doesn’t recognize people of color,” he said, adding that it’s a viewpoint shared by many alums he knows. “And I can point to myself when I talk to these kids whose parents didn’t graduate from college (and many who didn’t even graduate from

Workshop Houston

Reginald Hatter is out to prove that arts and humanities matter in a world where science, technology, engineering, and math get most of the love

lifts Off

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high school) and tell them I went to Baylor and never played football and I went to class like everyone else and worked hard and got my degree. And you can do it, too.”

Workshop Houston is a youth-driven community center that, since 2003, has evolved into programs for middle and high schoolers and also features a Summer Leadership Institute. Programs include a Scholar Shop that offers tutoring and academic enrichment; a Chopper Shop (welding and metal fabrication); a Beat Shop (music production); and a Style Shop (fashion and graphic design).

The White House recognition is a form of valida-tion for Hatter, both from a program standpoint and from a personal perspective. He says he’s his own harshest critic and constantly asks himself if the company is making an impact.

“Our staff is totally committed and knows that

what they do is important,” he says, explaining that “the Third Ward has high unemployment and low graduation rates; it’s not a place you come if you don’t have to. The award and all the media coverage in Houston that’s come from it has raised awareness and gotten the attention of the parents, who are referring other families to Workshop Houston.”

It’s also made the prospect of a citywide expan-sion of Workshop Houston more of a reality. The organization’s $1.7-million capital campaign kicked off in November at about the same time that Hatter and student Brianna Burns were meeting the First Lady. They’ve raised $700,000 and are preparing to break ground on their new facility on May 31. And that, says Hatter, means that Workshop Houston will have enough space to accommodate all the people who are now knocking on the door to sign up for its programs.

Hatter says that if it were not for Baylor, he wouldn’t be where he is today. He has come a long way from an arrest at age eleven for auto theft.

He says that arrest was the result of having “noth-ing to do,” a condition he’s determined to change for Houston youngsters. It’s that commitment that led to Workshop Houston being one of twelve after-school programs nationwide to receive the award in November.

“Baylor is my everything,” he told us last fall. “I grew up in California, which was very liberal. Baylor raised my expectations for myself, being surrounded by so many smart and talented people, including professors who wouldn’t let me skate. I quickly realized that I didn’t know how to write or study. I got F’s on my first four or five papers but I took advantage of the resources that the university

IN THE HOUSE: Reginald Hatter and student Brianna Burns (center) met with First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House.

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offered. Baylor taught me to take initiative and ask questions. It taught me how to be a responsible adult.”

Hatter was a political science and criminal justice major at Baylor, but says joining the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (a service-oriented fraternity for primarily African-American students) started him on his path.

“I was our volunteer coordinator and went to some very tough schools in Waco. I saw myself in some of those schools and how important having positive role models was. After college, I went to grad school back home in California, driving three hours per day back and forth until I had a heart attack from all the stress of trying to balance school and my old neigh-borhood. My mother — who has since passed away — told me I needed to take time for myself, so I moved back to Houston’s Third Ward, where my father and his family had grown up. Tutoring had always been my passion, and this Workshop Houston program needed someone to start a tutorial program.”

Hatter says he had other job opportunities, but the founders convinced him that they were going to build something great. “My experience at Baylor taught me all about hard work and sacrifice, so I took a risk and gave up a full-time job to try to make a difference in the lives of young children,” he says. “I moved into an abandoned building that had no running water or electricity. We ran an extension cord from the bike shop for light, and I bathed with Purell. I lived there seven months, but it was worth it. We got the tutorial program up and running, and I eventually became

co-director, responsible for all of our programs.”

With thousands of after-school programs across the country, Hatter says he thinks he knows why Workshop Houston got singled out for attention. “Everyone talks about send-ing kids to college, but there are many factors that impact that,” he says. “What makes us unique is that we give young people tools they can use today, things they can do once they leave this building and go home. It’s so important to keep these kids occupied because it’s when they have noth-ing to do that they get in trouble. We give them things they can do once they leave and go home — things like designing cool books, music theory, and art. They leave other programs and that’s it — nothing more.”

While he was in Washington to accept the award, Hatter had a chance to talk to his fellow winners and other program providers, all of whom have some-thing in common. “I learned that programs in the arts and humanities matter,” he says. “That’s what makes us and the other eleven programs that won different. There’s a lot of emphasis on STEM [Sci-ence, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] curriculum, but the arts and humanities are just as important. We have jobs for a reason, but we all need to create — dance, literature, music — and we have to get these young people started much earlier appreciat-ing those things.”

—Peter Osborne is the editor of the Baylor Line magazine.

REGINALD HATTER:“What makes us unique is that we give young people tools they can use today, things they can do once they leave this building and go home.”

BL



JOHN LEE HANCOCK ’79, JD ’82Screenwriter and Film Director

2009 Distinguished Alumni Award: For a variety of screen-play and directing credits including The Alamo, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, A Perfect World, and Hard Time Romance. Also directed The Rookie, which won an ESPY for Best Sports Movie in 2002.

Since Winning the Award: Wrote and directed The Blind Side; directed Saving Mr. Banks (an American Film Institute Movie of the Year), and wrote Snow White and the Huntsman. Coming up: The Magnificent Seven (Chris Pratt, Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke), which he was a writer on, and The Founder, starring Michael Keaton, which he will direct this summer. Received the Media & Arts Medal of Service from Baylor in 2014.

Biggest Goal: Keep working.Passionate About: Stories I get to tell.Definition of Success: Having a job that feels like a

hobby.Most Important Lesson: Know yourself and your

strengths and weaknesses.Baylor Experience: Attending Baylor had everything to

do with my success—from the teachers to the friends I made, Baylor brought out the best in me.

Best Decision: Quitting the practice of law and moving to Los Angeles.

Worst Decisions: Any time I didn’t follow my gut.Best Piece of Advice: Judge Wyatt Heard told me

“Do what you love, and money will beat a path to your door. It may not be a lot of money, but it will be sufficient to the task.”

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD WINNERS UPDATE / by Peter Osborne

Lessons Learned

One of the most important functions that the Baylor Alumni Association provides to its members and their families is recognizing—and telling the stories—of our most success-ful alumni. Over a 48 year period, the Baylor Line has celebrated the achievements of 165 winners of our Distinguished Alumni Award

and also presented awards to and for Outstanding Young Alumni, Retired Faculty and Administrators, First Families, Distinguished Church Service, Meritori-ous Service, Distinguished Public Service, and belief in and commitment to religious liberty (the Abner V. McCall Award).

In our Line Notes blog, we’ve continued the tradi-tion of recognizing alumni who are bringing honor and glory to our university in both large and small ways. We thought that in this, our first issue of 2015, it might be fun to ask some of our past winners to update us on what they’ve been doing since win-ning the award and to reflect on their careers. As the responses began coming in, we realized two things: Winning the BAA’s Distinguished Alumni Award is not a lifetime achievement award presented just before being put out to pasture, and this will be a recurring feature in the Baylor Line for a long time to come.

Some of our most successful alumni share their experiences and inspiration

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DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD WINNERS UPDATE / by Peter Osborne

Lessons Learned

Attending Baylor had everything to do with my success—from the teachers to the friends I made, Baylor brought out the best in me.

—John Lee Hancock



REBEKAH ANN NAYLOR ’64Global Health Care Consultant, Baptist Global Response

2010 Distinguished Alumni Award: At the time, she was a surgeon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Fort Worth and a former medical mis-sionary in Bangalore, India, where she served for twenty-eight years in the Bangalore Baptist Hospital. The first woman to graduate from the surgical program at UT Southwestern Medical Center, she returned in 2002 to become the director of student education in the department of surgery.

Current Role: Mobilize health care professionals to go on missions all over the world both for a short term as volunteer and longer terms. I believe medicine meets physical needs and opens doors for Gospel sharing.

Passionate About…: Health care missions.Definition of Success and How That’s Changed Over

the Years: Success is giving glory to God in every task and relationship. That has not changed but has deepened and matured.

Most Important Lesson: God has used all of life’s experiences to prepare me for the work He has given me.

Baylor Experience: A solid educational foundation Best Decision: To follow Jesus and to obey His call into

mission service overseas.

A. T. “GUS BLACKSHEAR JR. ’64, JD ‘68Retired, Of Counsel to Fulbright & Jaworski LLP

2004 Distinguished Alumni Award: Career highlights include partner and retired chair of the Houston law firm of

Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, a firm that at the time had eight hundred lawyers spread across the eight domestic offices and three foreign offices. In 2004, he had recently retired as chair of the board of Memorial Hermann Healthcare System and was serving on numerous boards.

Since Winning the Award: Now retired as the managing partner of Fulbright & Jaworski but serving as Of Counsel. “The most interesting thing I have to report is I have a grand-daughter who was graduated from Baylor in December and two more who are juniors there now.”

Baylor Experience: Professors in accounting like Drs. Henke, Holmes, and Parsons were excellent in teaching me how to study, think about, and solve problems. In law school, I had giants in their fields of law, such as Angus McSwain, William Boswell, Peeler Williams, and David Guinn, to name a few.

The Best Advice You Ever Received: In Dallas, I grew up as a Boy Scout and eventually reached the rank of Eagle. I served in leadership positions in my troop and at a Jam-boree in Valley Forge. I learned a lot about leadership from those days and have always remembered the Scout motto, “Be Prepared.” As I began my professional career, I received some invaluable advice from a more senior lawyer at our firm about helping clients make good decisions. He told me, “The way to make good decisions is to be sure to get all the facts or at least as many facts as you can. Good decisions come from know-ing the facts and are almost impossible to make without the facts.”

Passion: Since I am now Of Counsel to my law firm and not a partner, I have a lot more available time than I once did. I am passionate about non-profit board service, which I have done for many years, and mentoring younger Christian men.

DAVID HILLIS ’80Alfred Roark Centennial Professor in Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin

2012 Distinguished Alumni Award: He was recognized for his study of phylogeny (the study of evolutionary relation-ships), which is a major tool used to understand the origin and transmission of many human diseases, both in scientific and forensic investigations. Was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (known as the “Genius Grant”), which gave him $295,000 to spend on whatever research interested him and enabled him to study whether genetic transmission always comes equally from a mother and a father. His father, Dr. William D. Hillis, won this award in 1998 (see next page). His first date with future wife, Ann, was going out to listen to frogs.

Biggest Goal: I’m working to push the frontiers of knowledge in molecular evolution and develop new applica-

Gus Blackshear ,Jr. and wife Stuart in London.

Rebekah Ann Naylor



tions that use the rapidly accumulating genomic data from many organisms. These applications range from agriculture to forensics to human health to conservation biology, and beyond.

Passionate About: The evolutionary connections across all of life, and how knowledge of that information is trans-forming biology. I’m passionate not only about developing new knowledge in this area, but also about educating a new generation of biologists.

Definition of Success and How That’s Changed: Suc-cess for me relates to discovery of knowledge and sharing those discoveries with others. That applies to both my profes-sional life (scientific discoveries) as well as my personal life (learning how to live and relate to others in a way that makes the world a better place to live).

Baylor Experience: My time at Baylor challenged me to defend my views and to stand up for truth and fairness in all areas of my life.

Best Decision: To ignore what others advised were “hot areas” of science, and to follow my interests instead. The hot

areas tend to get very crowded (since everyone gets the same advice), and it is much more interesting to be the developer of a new hot area than it is to be a late arrival at an old one.

Worst Decision: I have no major regrets. But if I were to live life over again, I would invest more of my retirement sav-ings in things I enjoyed owning (like land), and less in things that give me no pleasure (like stocks and bonds). It is hard to enjoy a weekend hiking over a dozen shares of Microsoft.

Best Piece of Advice: From my parents: Follow your passions in life, and the rest will fall into place.

WILLIAM D. HILLIS, MD ’53 Retired as Chair of Baylor Biology Department,living in Buckner Retirement Facility, Austin

1998 Distinguished Alumni Award: He was recognized for a career that included research positions with the U.S. Air Force in Denmark, the Republic of the Congo, and Lackland Air

My time at Baylor challenged me to defend my views and to stand up for truth and fairness in all areas of my life. —David Hillis ’80



Force Base in Texas, where he focused on the investigation of human infectious disease epidemics throughout the world. Hillis joined the Baylor faculty as the chair of the biology department, arriving from Johns Hopkins University, where he had been director of its School of Medicine’s outpatient clinical research center. Hillis served two vice presidencies at Baylor and won a number of teaching and administrator awards during his tenure.

After Winning the Award: Hillis was named the Cor-nelia Marschall Smith Professor of the Year in 2009, which he described at the time as “the honor of a lifetime” in part because of his close relationship with the revered professor, who passed away in 1997 at the age of 101.

Biggest Goal: Write an account of my previous experi-ences in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, in the U.S. Air Force (including my thirty-plus years in the Air Force Reserve and my experiences as hospital commander of two USAF Reserve Hospitals in Dover, Delaware, and in the Alamo Wing in San Antonio), living in Denmark doing research in hepatitis at the State Serum Institute, in the Republic of the Congo during its revolution while in residence there in 1964 doing research in hepatitis, in Calcutta, India, as resident coordinator of the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Research and Training, and my years at Baylor, as department chair of biology, as a member of the medical staff of the Student Health Center, as executive vice president, as vice president for Student Life, as Cornelia Marschall Smith Distinguished Professor of Biology, and as professor of biology courses in the Baylor in the Brit-ish Isles Program in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and as professor of biology and director of the Maastricht Program in Europe. I hope its impact will help my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to know what my life was all about and why, and my former students (of which there are now more than 10,000 physicians, dentists, physi-cian assistants, physical therapists, medical technicians, pub-lic heath officers, and specialists now practicing all over the world) why it is important not only to be excellent health-care providers but to do their services lovingly, as a response to the grace of God they’ve been shown in their personal lives. How I’ll do it: writing a day at a time, as God gives me the opportu-

nity in my remaining years, with the help of my word proces-sor, my precious, sweet wife at my side, to nudge the remem-brances of days gone by, old photographs, and endless blessed memories of my own.

Passionate About: Concern for world hunger, poverty, and other injustices of mankind.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: The same as I did sixty-two years ago, when I graduated from Baylor: How well one is able to define his or her positive im-pact upon other pilgrims along the way.

Most Important Lesson: It’s not important whether you’ve won or lost, but how you’ve played the game (some-thing I think I first heard of in kindergarten).

Baylor Experience: Baylor continued and sharpened the job my grandmother, mother, and many, many teachers began, that of giving my life purpose, direction, meaning, and fulfill-ment.

Best Advice: (1) Give your life to medicine (it came from two Baylor professors, Dr. Patricia Drake Sheppard; and Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith); (2) start saving for retirement as soon as you possibly can (it came from two Johns Hopkins professors, Dr. Frederick B. Bang and Dr. Gordon Walker); (3) stay active in the Air Force Reserve after active duty, (it came from Col. Elmer Dahl, an Air Force pathologist). The last piece of advice allowed me to have a supplemental annuity and to have medical care and medications for life.

CLEOPHUS J. LARUE ’78 MA ’82 Francis Landey Patton Professor of Homiletics at Princeton (NJ) Theological Seminary

2012 Distinguished Alumni Award: He was recognized as one of the university’s most prestigious academic graduates. LaRue is a respected authority on preaching in the African-American community and has written and edited five books on the subject.

Biggest Goal: My biggest goal is to continue to prepare women and men for Christian ministry at all levels of the church, but especially the pastoral ministry.

Passionate About: I have almost finished with my research and writing on a new book titled Toward a Deeper Understanding of Celebration in Black Preaching. This book is a corrective that seeks to turn “celebration” in black preaching away from mere festivity and revelry to ritual acts of worship-ful praise. I argue in the book that blacks are indeed having a “good time” in church as they engage in their much- bally-hooed “participatory proclamation” style of worship. But I also argue that having a good time in worship does not neces-sarily translate into worshipful praise that moves us from adoration in worship to action in the world.

Definition of Success: Early on in my ministerial career,

William and Argye Hillis



I thought the proper credentials, employment at a distin-guished seminary, and tenure and its benefits were a sign of success. Since then, I’ve come to see these things for what they are, or rather what they should be: an opportunity to serve the present age in the name of Jesus Christ. To me, success is de-fined today not by how much I can personally accomplish, but rather how well I respond to others out of a sense of duty and responsibility to my call and vocation as a Christian minister. Success, to me, is living my life in such a way that God can use me anywhere or any time.

Most Important Lesson: That life is fleeting and there is little time to sit back on one’s laurels and accomplishments. I’ve also learned that life has its peaks and valleys and that change for better or for worse comes upon us suddenly. To see life this way creates in me an urgency to do the best I can while I can. As I get older, I recognize that I only have today and that there are no guarantees for tomorrow. I’m saddened when I hear of the passing of a much-beloved Baylor profes-sor—John B. Davidson, Daniel McGee, and others of late. But this news also reminds me of my own mortality and the need to live every day to its fullest.

Baylor Experience: Receiving two degrees from Baylor University made a big difference in my life. Although my parents did not graduate from college, they were determined that their children would have a better life through higher education. Consequently, they stressed education and pushed

me and my siblings to go as far as we could in pursuit of formal education. Baylor opened so many doors for me and made it possible for me to experience life to a degree that simply would not have been possible had I remained in my hometown of Corpus Christi. Baylor created in me a desire not simply to minister to the people of South Texas, but to the world. I did my first international travel through the Baylor in London program with Dr. Daniel McGee. That experi-ence greatly expanded my mental horizon. Baylor’s rigorous pursuit of scholarship and its openness to a changing world taught me not to be afraid of difference and otherness, but to embrace them and willingly participate in new opportunities. I owe the school a great debt.

Best Decision: The best decision I made in my profes-sional life was to seek formal education after announcing my call to the Gospel ministry as a nineteen-year-old in Corpus Christi. I grew up in a time when, especially among black Baptists, I was told that I did not need to go to school in order to be an effective minister. I’m so glad I ignored that advice even though it came from men I greatly respected. My Baylor taught me early on that in believing I could think, and in thinking, I could believe. I learned that head and heart could go together and there was no need to pursue one at the expense of the other. The second-best decision was to leave pastoral ministry and head to Princeton to prepare for a teaching career. Although I, and others who loved me,

My Baylor taught me early on that in believing I could think, and in thinking, I could believe. I learned that head and heart could go together. —Cleophus J. LaRue ’78, ‘82


At Baylor, I learned the value of big ideas, friendships, Christian value, confi dence, knowledge, life experience in business, marriage and children. —Drayton McLane, ‘58



had mixed emotions about my transition from Texas to New Jersey, in hindsight it was the right move for me. Even though I continue to miss pastoral ministry, I have spent the past twenty years teaching the next generation of ministers. I’d like to think I’ve made some small contribution to the church.

Worst Decision: If I had it to do all over again, I would pursue graduate education early on. The longer one puts off education, the more difficult it becomes to achieve. I wish I could have studied for the PhD in my late twenties as opposed to my late thirties. The longer you wait to pursue educa-tion, the more difficult it becomes for your family and your finances. I also learned that it is never too late to start out on your journey of accomplishment. I often have people who are thinking of attending seminary say to me that they are in their thirties and forties and they think they don’t have three years to give to seminary training. And I usually say to them that whatever age they will be in three years, they’re going to be that age anyway, so they might as well be that age with a degree.

Best Piece of Advice: I think the best advice I’ve ever gotten was from Dr. Ray Summers when I was trying to de-cide whether or not to leave Texas and head to Princeton, New Jersey, to further my education. Dr. Summers told me to listen intently for a still, small voice that would give me the confident assurance that the move I was contemplating was the right move for me. I trusted his advice and sought that voice, and thirty years later I have every confidence that it was the right move for me. Whenever there is a big decision in my life, in my prayer and meditation time, I listen intently for that still, small voice of which Dr. Summers spoke many years ago.

DRAYTON MCLANE ’58CEO of McLane Group

1991 Distinguished Alumni Award: After college, McLane joined his family’s business, McLane Wholesale Grocery Business Co., succeeding his father as president and CEO in 1978 and growing the business into a $7 billion enterprise before selling it to family friend Sam Walton. But Drayton McLane’s visionary guidance and continuing demonstration of his love for Baylor is proof positive that winning this award for many represents just one step in a long journey.

Since Winning the Award: McLane was the president and CEO of the Houston Astros baseball team from 1993 to 2011. Along with running The McLane Group, a multi-billion-dollar holding company based in Temple, he and his wife, Elizabeth, are also known for their church leadership, philanthropic gifts, and community spirit. In addition to providing the lead gift for the new football stadium that was named in their honor, the McLanes generosity can be seen in the McLane Student Life Center, the gold-leaf finish on the

dome of Pat Neff Hall, the McLane Organ in Jones Concert Hall, and the acclaimed McLane carillons. He received the Baylor Founders Medallion in 2013, the pinnacle of a series of Baylor honors that he has received over the years that include Baylor Regent Emeritus, the Herbert H. Reynolds Award for Exemplary Service, and the W. R. White Service Award.

Biggest Goal: McLane Group is responsible for several businesses and the goal is to improve leadership of each busi-ness for long-term success.

Passionate About: Public service for Baylor Scott and White, Baylor University, our church, and Christian projects and values.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: Technol-ogy has made everything move faster in ideas and knowledge.

Most Important Lesson: The importance of a great Christian education from Baylor.

Baylor Experience: At Baylor, I learned the value of big ideas; friendships; Christian values; confidence; knowledge; and life; experience in business, marriage and children.

Best Decisions: Getting a great education from Baylor and Michigan State University; Going into business at twenty-two; Marriage for forty-two years, two sons and five grandsons.

Worst Decision: Most important, when you have prob-lems, don’t panic. Analyze the problem and work your way to success. But learn from your mistakes and don’t do that again.

Best Piece of Advice: I heard Gene Hoffman, President of Kroeger, once say, “You’ll never become what you want to be by remaining as you are.”

KENT GILBREATH ’67, MA ’68Retired as a Baylor professor in 2011 Currently a Forensic Economist

2004 Distinguished Alumni Award: The economics profes-sor and holder of the E. M. and Thelma Stevens Chair of Private Enterprise and Entrepreneurship was in his thirty-first year of teaching at Baylor, specializing in economic history, U.S.-Mexico relations, and energy and environmental economics. He served several terms as a board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Since Winning the Award: Found a second career on the witness stand, serving as a “forensic economist” to put a price tag on losses that often seem incalculable.

Biggest Goal: I testify about economic damages in court cases for both plaintiffs and defendants, with the ultimate goal of helping to play a small role in providing fair and equitable justice in America’s legal system. In carrying out this work, I have prepared more than seven hundred economic reports seeking to help juries assess accurate and reasonable damages in court cases.

Passionate About: Poetry and appreciating the magic

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and beauty of nature.Definition of Success and How That’s Changed: I

view success today as finding a balance and harmony in my life and effectively communicating the depth of my love to my wife and children and the dependability of my support and affection to my friends. Earlier in my life, I sought to achieve the above goals but focused a greater amount of time on achieving financial success and success in my career, with an accompanying focus on trying to impart knowledge and wisdom to my students in the hope that they might help make the world a better and more just place.

Lesson Learned: That when you sincerely try to change things that you don’t believe are right and that are headed in the wrong direction, you will be amazed at the willingness of people to join with you and help make the changes that are necessary.

Baylor Experience: I didn’t realize that you wanted a book-length response to your questions! Who among us could ever do justice to the impact that Baylor has had on our lives? My life at Baylor as a student and as a professor has helped me achieve virtually everything that I wanted to ac-complish in my life professionally and personally. Sorry, but I need one more sentence: Baylor helped me find new direc-tions in my life—directions that I had never imagined, and directions that have helped me have as full and vibrant a life as anyone could ever hope for.

Best Decisions: Professionally speaking, my most important decision was made before I actually began my professional life, and this decision underlay every other decision I would make later. At Baylor, perhaps guided by genes, background, or some other innate tendency, I became fascinated with learning everything I could about every field of knowledge that I could comprehend. Knowledge and a love of learning has proved to be the most valuable asset in my professional life. The single best decision I have made in my personal life was managing to persuade Shirley Nims Gilbreath ’68 to marry me (in the Armstrong-Browning Trea-sure Room). I have learned from her that there is a fullness to life that I could never have known without her.

Worst Decision: There are far too many lessons I have

learned in the “college of hard knocks” to list here, but per-haps the best lesson I learned was to just get up and go on when knocked down—to fight on and pay closer attention to the prayer of St. Francis.

Best Piece of Advice: The best piece of advice I have ever gotten was not a piece of advice; it was lessons I learned from the courage and kindness embodied in the lives of the many admirable people I have known.

JOSEPH CIPRIANO ‘69 President/Owner Ocean View Big Picture Consulting

1993 Distinguished Alumni Award: He was in the midst of a twenty-nine-year stint as the executive director and deputy commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command and had just completed a role as director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s $8-billion Superconducting Super Collider program in Dallas, the largest international basic research project since the Manhattan Project. In his role with the Naval Sea Systems, Cipriano served as the Navy’s first Battle Force System Engineer and Deputy Commander for Warfare Systems.

Since Winning the Award: Retired in 2009 as president of Lockheed Martin’s Business Process Services subsidiary, he played a key role in designing the company’s federal and commercial proposal efforts and crafting the company’s strat-egy for large-scale managed system procurements. He had previously served as the Department of the Navy’s Program Executive Officer for Information Technology with a pri-mary role of developing and fielding the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) program, the Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System (DIMHRS), and the Navy Standard Integrated Personnel System (NSIPS). Cipriano received a number of professional awards, including the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award, 2002 Federal Comput-er Week IT Professional of the Year, and 2001 Post/Newsweek Government Executive of the Year. In 2001, he received the highest Navy award for a civilian, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award.

Biggest Goal: My biggest goal at this point in my career is to pass along the things I have learned to help my consult-ing customers and those I mentor become more successful and satisfied. I am a volunteer mentor for Everwise and speak to physics students whenever I get a chance. My church and family have moved up in priority for my time to bring better balance after a very busy career.

Passionate About: I am passionate about all people being treated with respect, not allowing people going hungry

Shirley, Bess, and Kent Gilbreath

Joseph Cipriano



with so much bounty in the world, and grandchildren.Definition of Success and How That’s Changed:

Success will always be defined as mission accomplished. The missions, however, have changed from a career focus to God and family and doing good in the world. I started out with a God and family focus, but somewhere along the line I stopped fighting the conflicting demands on my time and let career win like so many of us do. Now I define success as passing up on an opportunity to make money to go on a vacation with my wife.

Lessons Learned: Smart people often don’t realize they are smart; they just think everyone else is dumb. The world is largely made up of average people who do not like being treated as if they are dumb. I have seen a lot of brilliant people fail because of this lack of self awareness.

Baylor Experience: I got the best possible education at Baylor, far superior to many of my peers. I left Baylor with a love of science and religion and experience with the rewards of giving back to community.

Best piece of Advice: The best advice I ever got was passed on to me from a U.S. Navy friend and is attributed to the late, great ADM Rickover. He reportedly told all the new officers recruited into the nuclear Navy that “every man is from time to time overcome by an uncontrollable urge to do something stupid. All I ask is when that happens to you, you call me first so I can put the Fire Department on alert.” I can’t tell you how many times that bit of advice has stopped me from doing something really stupid.

GENERAL MARIA CRIBBS OWENS ’75Retired – U.S. Air Force; Consultant, The Cohen Group, Washington, D.C.

2001 Distinguished Alumni Award: She was recognized for her years of military service that include director of person-nel and deputy base commander of the electronic systems division at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, chief of executive services at Langley Air force Base in Virginia, deputy director of personnel and manpower at U.S. European Command headquarters in Germany, and commander of the Air Force Inspection Agency at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. At the time of the award, she was the executive secretary to U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, where she was responsible for screening, reviewing, and editing all the secretary’s correspondence, planning his travel schedule, and acting as a sounding board.

Biggest Goal: After thirty years of service, I retired from the Air Force and afterward was a vice president at the Cohen Group, an international business consulting firm established by former Secretary of Defense Cohen. While now I work as a consultant on special projects for the Cohen Group, for the most part I have stepped away from my former stress-filled

professional life. My primary focus today—one that many of us share—is supporting my family, particularly my ninety-two-year-old mother, who is a WW II veteran. I try not to take myself too seriously and to live in gratitude, knowing that these are precious moments with cherished family members. There are some opportunities that we only have one chance to do right.

Passionate About: For several years I have worked to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. This renowned center for fighting childhood cancer shares its cutting-edge research and collaborates with medical institutions through-out the world. The positive impact that St. Jude’s has had in helping thousands of children and their families is really unbelievable, and the work continues today.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: For many years, I defined success by being very driven and hard-charging. I believed that I had to be perfect—the first one in each morning and the last one to leave at the end of the day. I was pretty obnoxious. In the process, I sacrificed my personal life and let valued family and friends down. While I still place a high value on a successful professional life, I have come to appreciate that to be truly successful, one’s life needs balance and that true success comes from the contributions we make to family, friends, and community.

Baylor Experience: Coupled with my parents’ example and legacy of service, my Baylor University experience and Air Force ROTC were a very solid springboard to adult life and to a very gratifying career in the Air Force. I have had extraordinary opportunities and challenges—from serving the President of the United States as a social aide to traveling to amazing places like Petra and Djoubti; from learning tough professional and leadership lessons, to surviving the 9/11 at-tack on the Pentagon; from experiencing remarkable inter-national business consulting work to knowing true humility in the presence of our nation’s heroes. I am convinced that whatever successes have come to me have their roots in my

General Maria Cribbs Owens

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parents’ example and my Baylor experience. Over the years, I have come to a deeper appreciation of the Baylor legacy and the signifi cance of being a Baylor grad. I owe the world to the counsel and personal mentoring of wonderful professors like Dr. Pat Wortman and Dr. Tillman Rodabough who were never too busy to share faith or wise philosophy of life. My happiest memories are of experiences shared and “life and love lessons learned” with Kappa Theta-Tri Delta sisters. And it is hard not to be infl uenced by the example of dear friends like Sue Herring ’74, who for many years has been recognized as an extraordinary teacher, and Dan Williams ’75, who has served his faith as an educator and pastor throughout the United States and in China. It would be diffi cult to fi nd a graduate whose Baylor experience did not lead him or her into a life of leadership or selfl ess service.

Best Decision: There is little that can compare with the opportunity to go to work each day in a building where the American fl ag fl ies outside the front door. At Baylor gradua-tion, after four years in Air Force ROTC, I had some misgiv-ings about accepting the Air Force commission and a career in the military. I will never forget Sgt. Tate, an Air Force non-commissioned offi cer in the Baylor Air Force ROTC,

who wisely took me aside and encouraged me “to go for it.” Accepting my Air Force commission and forging ahead for thirty years in the Air Force was the number one best per-sonal and professional decision I have made. I am grateful for the legacy, the signifi cance of being a member of our nation’s armed forces, and the sense of purpose in a profession that serves a cause greater than oneself.

Best Advice: My father gave me two great pieces of ad-vice. First, “being right is not always enough.” That is a tough one to accept, especially when one knows one is right! I par-ticularly learned this in a heartbreaking tough lesson when I was an Air Force commander trying to lead an organization that was not responding positively to my ideas or expecta-tions. The lesson has stayed with me. Second, my father said, “it is better to commit a sin of commission than a sin of omis-sion.” My brothers and I were instilled with a sense of adven-ture by my parents and the idea that we should lean forward and grab every opportunity available. Sometimes this leads to great fun and excitement, and other times to disappointment and failure. I have experienced both the joy and the heartache and, regardless of the results, it has been very satisfying to live by this philosophy.

Complimenting another person, and listening genuinely to another person, are the greatest gifts they will receive all day, all week, all year.

— Frank Newport, ‘70



FRANK NEWPORT ’70Editor-In-Chief, Gallup

2002 Distinguished Alumni Award: Newport was rec-ognized for directing Gallup’s widely respected polls and disseminating the results. The award noted that he was the featured on-air host of CNN’s Gallup Poll segments and had presented more than eight hundred segments over the preceding two years; that he regularly appeared on CNN In-ternational and CNNfn; that he edited the Gallup Poll Monthly magazine; and recorded twice-weekly radio features that were broadcast on CNN to 1,500+ stations around the United States.

Since Winning the Award: Oversees Gallup’s interviews with 350,000 Americans on a daily basis each year, as well as more than 150 countries worldwide. He publishes extensively on the key topics of the day at gallup.com, and his analyses appear in his blog Polling Matters, in books and other publica-tions, and on video, podcasts, and through radio and televi-sion appearances and speeches. He is the author of Polling Matters – Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People and God is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America, and co-author of Winning the White House 2008 and The Evangelical Vote.

Biggest Goal: Distilling the extremely valuable collective wisdom of the people of the country in a way that can be used to help elected representatives and other leaders make better decisions for the long-term and optimal survival and well being of our society.

Passionate About: Bringing the people into the debate on inequality. Philosophers and pundits and politicians from time immemorial have put forth their opinions on inequality. But collective decisions on intervening in society to change the structure and systems relating to inequality need to be guided by and accepted by the people, not by whims or changing philosophic positions.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: I look more at it through evolutionary eyes. What has one done that improves the species and its chances of surviving—not just physically but in terms of their optimized well being across all spheres of their mental and physical lives. This is a short-hand way of saying: “What have you done to make other people better and to make the world a better place?”

Most Important Lesson: In business and in interper-sonal relations, a genuine verbal reinforcement of a person (i.e., a compliment) is a tremendous and powerful gift you can give — at no cost. Second, the great wisdom of one of Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits”: Seek first to understand, rather than to be understood. In other words, shut up and listen. In short, complimenting another person, and listening genuinely to another person, are the greatest gifts they will receive all day, all week, all year.

Best Decision: Many years ago, not to quit an early job for

allegedly greener pastures, but to take the longer-term posi-tion on focusing on the job I had. Looked at differently and paraphrasing John F. Kennedy, ask not so much what the job is doing for you, but what you can do for your job.

Worst Decision: To assume that everything will work out in the end without facing the facts directly early on when things are not going well. It is almost always better to face an unpleasant or not-working-well reality immediately, disrup-tive and painful though that might be, rather than putting off dealing with it in the hopes that it will somehow get better or fix itself. It rarely does.

Best Piece of Advice: When there is a dispute or argu-ment, move off of the personal egos and viewpoints and look at the outside perspective on what the true facts of the matter are. Let the truth be your guide in all situations; the truth shall set you free. Disputes and arguments and decisions should be based on what the facts and the truth are, rather than on personal ego and presentation of self. This involves, as a consequence, listening to and evaluating what the other person is saying, rather than rushing to dismiss it in the ego-driven effort to push one’s own perspective.

JOHN P. RIOLA ’68 Retired, Chief Geophysicistfor Texaco USA

2002 Distinguished Alumni Award: He was recognized for being the chief geophysicist for Texaco USA’s Worldwide Explora-tion division since 1999. Riola specialized in seismic data acquisi-tion and processing, which enabled Texaco to successfully collect and analyze data in land areas that had previously been closed to exploration.

Since Winning Award: Retired in 2002 from Chevron-Texaco shortly after the merger between the two companies and, later retired from PetroSkills in 2012 after seven years of consulting. I am currently a student again at Rice, where I received a MA (1971) and a PhD in Physics (1973), but now I attend the School of Continuing Education, focusing on classes in history, art history, and international relations.

Biggest Goal: Stay healthy and active for as long as pos-sible to serve as a resource for my family and a mentor for my children.

Passionate About: I enjoy learning about subjects other than science and math, which were my focus in school, and I am passionate about Baylor football and enjoy spending game days at McLane Stadium with Baylor friends and family.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: As a

John P. Riola



manager at Texaco, I learned to focus more on developing staff and less on personal achievements. Whatever success I achieved in my professional and personal life, I am able to sleep well at night with the decisions that I made.

Most Important Lesson: The timing of the BAA Award was at the culmination of my Texaco career, and since that event I have been more focused on family and friends.

Baylor Experience: Baylor’s undergraduate humanities, physics, and math courses proved to be useful to me in techni-cal management at Texaco and PetroSkills. Work has been a lifelong education, only work is easier than school, and you get paid!

Best Decision: Choosing to pursue an applied science career when no academic research or teaching opportunities were available in the 1970s, as I learned that I could still teach and train younger staff on the job while learning geophysics myself.

Worst Decision: A bad decision was turning down an offer from Stanford to enter its graduate program in applied physics after it had rejected my application to study in its physics department. Instead, I attended Rice and complet-ed my PhD at Rice in physics. After working for a number of years at Texaco as a geophysicist, I came to realize that the Stanford Admissions’ staff had understood me better from reading my graduate school application than I knew myself as a twenty-two-year-old senior at Baylor. But, I think that I ultimately ended up in the same place with my life, in spite of spending four years doing basic physics research at Rice.

Best Piece of Advice: The best advice I ever received came from a book by Joseph Campbell titled The Power of Myth, which was a collaboration between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. In Chapter 4, Campbell uses the phrase“ follow your bliss” to describe the person who is “living the life he ought to be living.” Although I have fallen off the track many times, the idea that Campbell voiced has served as the goal in my life.

BETTY BOYD WELCH ‘57Bible translator/linguist

2004 Distinguished Alumni Award: She was recognized for his efforts to translate the Bible for people who do not have it available in their own language. During her career, she has focused on analyzing and writing a previously unwritten language and then translating the Bible into that language for the Tucano people, who live in the Amazon rainforest of southeastern Colombia.

Biggest Goal: Typesetting and publishing seven Old Testament books and a reprint of the New Testament into Tucano, the language of the Tucanos (indigenous group) in southeast Colombia, South America by the summer of 2015. My “audience” is the indigenous group that speaks Tucano. There is an interest in having these Old Testament books in Tucano, and presently there are few copies left of the New Testament, which was published twenty-five years ago. This could be life-changing for them.

Passionate About: Seeing Gods Word translated into all of the languages of the world that do not have it at present.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: In the past, if I did not accomplish certain things at the same rate as others in my organization, I tended to feel “unsuccessful.” Now my desire is to be faithful to what God wants to accom-plish, to trust His timing and will, leaving the results to Him.

Baylor Experience: It was at Baylor that the Lord first showed me the needs of the unreached people groups of the world, and changed the direction of my life to become involved personally with one unreached group in Colombia, South America.

Best Decision: To step out of my comfort zone and to trust God in unknown situations to accomplish what He wants to do in my life and occupation.

Worst Decision: I had an opportunity to teach with a leading teacher in my organization, which would have increased my knowledge and abilities, but I refused because of fear of failure. I did not follow the preceding decision — I did not trust God. I learned that God gives us what we need at the appropriate time, and to go forward looking to Him to provide wisdom or whatever is needed. Best Advice: Be flexible!

DARRELL WARD ‘66CEO, ALL In Learning

2012 Distinguished Alumni Award: He was described as a “pioneer in educational technology.” Founded ALL In Learning in 2009, seeing the iPod Touch and iPad2 as “game changers for what the devices could do in the classroom.” At the point when he won the award, ALL In Learning had class-

Betty Boyd Welch



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room products in eleven states that used the iPad2 technology, enabling teachers to quickly grade students’ tests or quizzes and upload them to the cloud.

Biggest Goal: Continue to impact the achievement of students in schools across the country, especially the pre-K through six ages. By getting schools to use our ALL In Learn-ing Assessment for Learning platform, we can engage young learners to take responsibility for their learning delivering daily growth and success — leading to lifelong learners.

Passionate About: Creating young learners that will “buy in” to success in learning through hard work, resilience, patience, and growth.

Definition of Success and How It’s Changed: Profes-sionally, I have always defined success by my delivering tools for others to grow their success whether as a student, teacher or administrator. Personally, I define success as being a good husband, father, grandfather, and friend — willing to give as much as possible to help others.

Most Important Lesson: I think in accepting the BAA award and attending subsequent ceremonies, I would say the lesson I have learned is to minimize any personal achieve-

ments and just continue to travel the path that delivered the award. Five minutes is very adequate to thank everyone that needs thanking and provide an overview of the path to the award — I appreciated that opportunity.

Baylor Experience: The Baylor experience framed my life – period. Wonderful education, perfect wife, tremendous friends and an experience that I have been able to help extend to my children, and hopefully grandchildren.

Best Decision: My decision to leave the academic envi-ronment as a teacher and to work on products that can impact all teachers, administrators, and students. I learned that risk taking is okay.

Worst Decisions: A couple of decisions to partner with entities that I didn’t feel 100 percent trustworthy. Trust is an underlying belief of mine in all aspect of my personal and pro-fessional life. I want to interact, professionally and person-ally, with people who share trust and are transparent.

Best Piece of Advice: My attorney, a Baylor graduate, many years ago said precisely what I indicated above. Interact with people who are trustworthy, and don’t waste your time with people who are not trustworthy.

I’m passionate about creating young learners that will “buy in” to success in learning through hard work, resilience, patience, and growth. — Darrell Ward ’66


The new McLane Stadium is terrifi c for football and fans, but will the $290 million investment pay off for the University and Waco


The new McLane Stadium is terrifi c for football and fans, but will the $290 million investment pay off for the University and WacoHOME SW EET HOME


The new McLane Stadium is terrifi c for football and fans, but will the $290 million investment pay off for the University and Waco?

b y D a v i d P i c k l e


The new McLane Stadium is terrifi c for football and fans, but will the $290 million investment pay off for the University and Waco?

b y D a v i d P i c k l e

HOME SW EET HOME


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It may be years before that question can be fully answered, but surely early signs support the notion that building one of the nation’s best college stadiums on the Baylor campus benefited not only the athletics program but also the university in general.

The decision before the Board of Regents was never as simple as whether the university needed a new stadium. Floyd Casey Stadium was outdated, austere, and inconveniently located, but those factors alone could not justify a quarter-billion-dollar ex-pense. After all, Baylor rang up consecutive winning records in Floyd Casey’s final four seasons, producing a Heisman Trophy winner in 2011 and a never-to-be-forgotten Big 12 championship in its 2013 finale. However bleak Floyd Casey Stadium may have been, it was getting the job done.

Baylor’s leadership, however, recognized both the opportunity and the threat before it. The university needed an athletics program that was built to last, and rejoicing in occasional success no longer was the goal for any Baylor sport, let alone football.

The coaches and student-athletes who built the winning football records from 2010-13 came with the expectation that they were creating something special and that, eventually, the experience of playing Baylor football would meet or exceed anything else offered in the Big 12 Conference. Remaining in Floyd Casey Stadium would not get Baylor to the top of the Big 12 and keep it there. Since football is the financial engine that drives the rest of the athletics program, the actual question related to Baylor’s long-time viability in major-college intercollegiate athletics.

The good news, of course, is that nobody has to worry about what might have happened. With the commitment to McLane Stadium, coaches were retained and Baylor has attracted better players than at any time in its 117-year football-playing history. The result has been two consecutive Big 12 championships (the Bears won consecutive Southwest Conference championships only in 1915-16), the conference’s best record over the last three years (tied with Kansas State), an ESPN GameDay visit, and attendance that exceeded capacity by 1,570 fans per game in McLane Stadium’s first season. When the 2015 season opens, the Bears almost certainly will be ranked in the top 5

nationally, perhaps as high as number 3. Few Baylor fans ever dreamed of such heights.

And, of course, the stadium itself truly is the best. The sight lines are outstanding, Wi-Fi availability enhances the fan experience, and the video board is magnificent. The restrooms are enormously improved from Floyd Casey, as are the concession areas. The concourses are spacious, and the views of the campus may be even better than anticipated.

So, the stadium has been good for Baylor football – without question, as coach Art Briles might say. How, then, is football good for Baylor?

First, the obvious: Any fan who didn’t feel the green-and-gold blood pumping harder on football Saturdays last fall probably should see a doctor.

Homecoming events at the stadium with the team practicing below, exploring the campus before the games, crossing the pedestrian bridge over the Brazos pregame and postgame – few of us had ever felt so proud and unified in all of our Baylor experiences. No matter how good a product Baylor put on the field in the sixty-five years of Floyd Casey Stadium – and there were more good years than bad – the sense of community was never what it could be.

That’s all positive, but the takeaway for a $266-mil-lion outlay must mean more than the alumni feeling better about themselves.

At this point, we can travel back to 1984, when an

THE QUESTION WAS ALWAYS THERE, even amid the euphoria that came with the announcement and construction of McLane Stadium.

Yes, we all intuited that the beautiful new stadium alongside the Brazos River was needed, but what about the cost of $266 million? Is football really worth that much?

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unheralded Boston College football team defeated defending national champion Miami on a last-second pass from quarterback Doug Flutie to receiver Gerard Phelan. At the time, Boston College was in the process of transforming itself into a national-destination institution, and the notoriety from college football’s most famous Hail Mary pass, and Flutie’s subsequent Heisman Trophy, boosted the efforts to an unantici-pated level.

“Just as we were increasing faculty, fi nancial aid, and all of the components necessary for that kind of growth, we had this tremendous visibility with Doug Flutie,” Reid Oslin, BC’s former football sports infor-

mation director, told the NCAA News in 2007. “We had dozens of nationally televised games. We experienced an increase in applications. Souvenir sales, which had not been strong at that point, skyrocketed.”

Does any of that sound familiar?Baylor, in fact, is the latest version of what is

known among researchers at the Flutie Factor, which holds that a previously low-profi le football or bas-ketball program can generate major benefi ts for the overall university with sudden, unexpected success.

George Mason University, which earned a surpris-ing berth in basketball’s Final Four in 2006, generated $876,000 in merchandise sales in the time surround-

Any fan who didn’t feel the green-and-gold blood pumping

harder on football Saturdays last fall should see a doctor.



ing the Final Four; typical bookstore merchandise sales were $45,000 per month. And the school’s affi nity credit-card program saw huge increases in ap-plications, activation, and usage far beyond the initial euphoria. More importantly, however, was the effect on incoming students. In a typical year, 20 percent of accepted students enrolled, but after the Final Four run, 60 percent followed through.

Similar, and perhaps less ephemeral, success stories have played out at Gonzaga and Butler in men’s basketball and, to an extent, for Baylor with its 2005 women’s basketball championship.

The NCAA, understandably concerned that small programs would pour too much money into an opera-tion in which there’s a loser for every winner, commis-

sioned a study that found little correlation, on average, between athletic success and large-scale windfalls to colleges and universities. The “on average” qualifi er was signifi cant, however, because a few higher-educa-tion institutions have benefi ted in a large way.

Baylor appears to be one of them. Certainly the ath-letics program is on a roll. Football tickets sold out in McLane Stadium’s fi rst year, and there’s a large waiting list in year two. In 2014, Baylor athletics topped $1 mil-lion in licensing royalties for the fi rst time ($1.2 million, to be exact), with that number increasing for the fi fth consecutive year. And Baylor football has become one of the most popular products on television; the 2015 Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic garnered the largest postseason television audience of any game outside the three playoff contests. All of that means less fi nancial support is required from the university in general. (Only twenty athletics programs nationwide generate revenue over expense without institutional support.)

In fact, the school’s most recent fi nancial state-ments indicate what may be yet to come: Intercol-legiate Athletics Income rose to $33.2 million for the fi scal year ending May 31, 2014, up from $31.4 million a year earlier, with increases due to advance ticket and event sales, football suite revenues, television income, advertising income, and rental-contract advance payments that will be earned over the next one to eleven years.

The bigger story, however, may be found in the success of the overall university in recent years. This fall, Baylor attracted its largest freshman class in his-tory. Year-over-year deposits, an indicator of which students will enroll, surged 13 percent from 2012 to 2013. Deposits for prospective minority students were up 20 percent, while the percentage of deposits from out-of-state students topped 30 percent for the fi rst time.

Fundraising for the two-year period from Febru-ary 2012-14 was also energized. During that time, the university raised an astonishing $345 million. For certain, much of that came from lead gifts to fund McLane Stadium and the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation, but the fact remains that

$178 million was raised for academic purposes and $167 million for athletics. Signifi -cantly, more than 40,000 people donated, 18,000 of them for the fi rst time.

In short, Baylor’s trajec-tory is upward. Observers can debate questions of correlation

and causality with regard to athletics, but few would dismiss the effect of the almost constant media expo-sure that has accompanied athletics success. What-ever the cause, it is a great time to be a Baylor Bear. The university now ranks number seventy-one on the U.S. News and World Report rankings, the highest ever, and number forty-fi ve in the magazine’s high school counselor rankings.

As for McLane Stadium, some of the advantages are found in the moment. Other universities will build larger video boards, the in-stadium Wi-Fi will become the norm, and the overall newness will fade. Baylor, however, now is in a position of maintaining and building rather than playing a huge game of catch-up.

College football itself is navigating diffi cult issues involving participant safety and amateurism. Baylor’s athletics leadership is working with other major col-leges and universities throughout the nation to ensure those matters are resolved to the satisfaction of all parties so that football can continue to benefi t student-athletes, fans, and higher education itself for decades to come.

If they succeed, alumni can cross the bridge to McLane Stadium in twenty years and marvel at what a bargain it was.

—David Pickle ’74 was a member of the National Colle-giate Athletic Association staff for twenty-seven years.

“We wanted a dramatic visual

identifi cation that would help people

understand the moment they

arrived at Baylor University.”

—Sherri Privitera and Jeff Spear

The university needed an athletics program that was built to last, and rejoicing in occasional success no longer was the goal for any Baylor sport, let alone football.

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AS THE SENIOR ARCHITECT and project man-ager for the design of McLane Stadium, Jeff Spear and Sherri Privitera worked closely with a collaborative and diverse team from Baylor University to create what USA Today described as “the most beautiful set-ting in sport,” helping to build “the new front door for the university and for Waco.” Millions of people drive by McLane Stadium on Interstate 35 every year, and most agree that it offers unique brand awareness op-portunities for the university and a reason for visitors to stop and enjoy what Waco has to offer.

Spear was the lead stadium designer for the McLane Stadium project. During his more than twenty-fi ve years with Populous, he has become a design specialist in professional sports stadium architecture and collegiate athletic facilities, including BBVA Compass Stadium in Houston, University of

Minnesota TCF Bank Stadium, and the home stadi-ums for the New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, and Washington Redskins.

Privitera is recognized as one of the leading female architects in the sports-facility industry, and managed the McLane Stadium project for Populous. Through-out her 18-year career, Privitera has worked with more than fi fty universities on more than sixty-fi ve projects.

The fi nal project was the result of a visionary and collaborative design process with Baylor, one that involved, at various points more than one hundred in-dividuals from the university, including development, facilities, student activities, marketing, and beyond, as well as involvement from the City of Waco and a number of community groups.

Spear and Privitera took time out of their busy schedules to refl ect on the successes and challenges

Q U E S T I O N A N D A N S W E R

Brand promiseMeet the design team behind the Stadium on the Brazos

“We wanted a dramatic visual

identifi cation that would help people

understand the moment they

arrived at Baylor University.”

—Sherri Privitera and Jeff Spear



of building what they’ve described as a the “new iteration of the traditional football stadium…a liv-ing, breathing hybrid of next-generation tailgating, connectivity, revenue-generation opportunities, and brand opportunity.”

What were your objectives in designing the stadium?

Je� : Our primary objective in designing McLane Sta-dium was to create an iconic new home for the Baylor Bears—one that would engage students, interact with the city of Waco, and become a destination in central Texas. We wanted a dramatic visual identifi cation that would help people understand the moment they arrived at Baylor University while traveling along I-35. We tried to encapsulate the entire Baylor campus

experience into one grand piece of architecture that would make that statement to visitors and become an incredible place to gather and experience college football on beautiful fall Saturday afternoons.

What did Day One feel like, when you saw fans and players actually “using” what you designed?

Je� : It is hard to describe the emotions on opening day. There is one thing that stands out among the rest of the memories from that special day, which is the fi rst running of the Baylor Line. To see all the careful thought and design that went into making that a real-ity was particularly awesome.

Sherri: Opening day was magical. Seeing fans excited to experience Baylor football as they always deserved to experience it and hearing their comments

“The experience proved to me

and others that the design

and construction process is more successful when you respect one

another and as a team, see challenges as

opportunities.” —Sherri Privitera



about how the stadium exceeds their expectations was a feeling I will never forget. The first fifteen minutes before kick-off was surreal, and it felt like time slowed down as the crowd noise and music vibrated through the entire place

How was this experience di�erent from other stadiums you designed?

Je�: The Baylor Line is like no other experience I have ever been involved with or had to accommodate in a building. It was surreal to see all the pieces come together. People walking across the Umphrey Bridge, sailgating, the Bear Walk, sitting on the amphitheater steps, tailgating, moving through downtown to the site —our vision and Baylor’s vision for how that stadium would bring together the community was unlike any other. The stadium had the backbone of a strategic master plan that was reflective of the goals of the university, the city, and the team, making the stadium possible.

What’s the one thing that you’re most proud of relative to McLane Stadium?

Sherri: Exceeding everyone’s expectations—specifi-cally Coach Art Briles. I think everyone who was there on opening day was in awe of the stadium experience and realized how monumental it was for Baylor. I’m also so proud of the entire team involved—working with the University was such a positive experience and we built lifelong friendships—and I’m so proud of our internal team who made this vision a reality.

What was the best decision you made during the design process (i.e., the feature you pushed for that others resisted)?

Je�: We had many conversations about the recruiting room and the location of it. At Floyd Casey, the re-cruiting room was located on the main concourse, and while that worked well at the Case, it didn’t work very well at the new building because the building configu-rations were very different. So there was hesitation about putting it on field level—something that hadn’t ever been considered by Baylor before. But in the end, that recruiting room has become an absolute asset and a defining feature of the stadium. What recruit wouldn’t love that view and experience?

How (or did) your experience with the Baylor project (and the people) change you?

Sherri: Baylor was a special experience for most, if not all, of our design team members, myself included. We were involved with the project for more than

three-and-a-half years and during that time, formed professional relationships as well as meaningful, lasting friendships. Waco, in many ways, became our home, too. The experience proved to me and others that the design and construction process is more suc-cessful when you respect one another and as a team, see challenges as opportunities. Opening day was spe-cial, and it’s wonderful having the project complete, however it’s been an emotional transition. It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime project because we were involved in impacting a community!

A project like this would seem to require skill in consensus-building and negotiation. What’s your approach to that?

Sherri: Building consensus in a project like this is about listening, clear communication, follow-through, and collaborative leadership. Listening is the most crucial trait in effective consensus-building. You need to understand what the other party is communicating to thoughtfully respond. To achieve clear communica-tion, you need to establish communication protocols, develop meeting agendas with identified outcomes, build an achievable schedule, and identify roles and responsibilities for every person including the owner, design team, and contractor. Follow-through requires every design team member to produce quality product on time, including sketches, ideas, material research, presentations, documents, and so forth to assist the owner in decision-making. Leadership is crucial in consensus-building since most owners have not been through the process before of building a new stadium, and we need to lead our clients through the process while being collaborative in nature for the good of the project. When you prove yourself to others, you build trust, which is what we did at Baylor. We listened, communicated, followed through with great ideas, and led the charge. We had buy-in from all parties—everyone understood the monumental vision we had and wanted to see it succeed. Consensus-building in the earliest stages was critical to this.

What’s the best piece of advice that anyone’s ever given you?

Sherri: I’ve received great advice over the years but one of my recent favorites is from Drayton McLane. He told me to surround myself with people who are smarter than me otherwise it’s tough to get better.

Je�: It was a quote in my high school yearbook; I will never forget it: “Stay Cool.” Live it.

—Peter Osborne is the editor of the Baylor Line magazine.

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Q U E S T I O N A N D A N S W E R Je� Spear and Sherri Privitera of Populous



by Robert C. Cloud and Richard Fossey

ABOUT TWENTY-ONE MILLION Americans are enrolled in colleges, universities, and other postsecondary

educational institutions, and a majority of these people are forced to take out student loans to pay for their postsecondary schooling. In 2012, 71 percent of graduates from all four-year institutions had stu-dent loans averaging $29,400. At public institutions, two-thirds of the graduates had federal loans, and their average debt was $25,500; at private, nonprofit colleges and universities, three-quarters of the graduates had borrowed and had an average debt of $32,300, while 88 percent of the graduates at proprietary (for-profit) institutions had student-loan debt averaging $39,950.

Currently, more than forty million people have outstanding college or university loans, and the total amount of student loan debt has reached $1.3 trillion. About $1 trillion of the total indebtedness represents outstanding loans in the federally funded student-loan program. Another estimated $165 bil-lion is owed to private banks and financial institu-tions outside the federal student-loan program.

In recent years, it has become increasingly evi-dent that a great many former students are having

difficulty repaying their student loans. According to the Office of the Student Loan Ombudsman of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (a federal agency), more than fifteen million people have either defaulted on their student loans or are not making payments due to the fact that they obtained an economic hardship deferment or another feder-ally approved forbearance. In fact, only 60 percent of student loan borrowers were making scheduled payments on their loans one year after beginning the loan-repayment period.

We may think of delinquent student-loan debt-ors as people in their twenties, but not everyone who is behind on a student-loan payment is young. Researchers for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently examined the loan status of thirty-seven million student-loan borrowers. Fourteen percent of these borrowers—approximately 5.4 mil-lion people—had at least one past-due student-loan account. Of $85 billion in total past due balances on student loans, only about 25 percent of those past-due balances was owed by borrowers under the age of thirty; 40 percent was owed by borrowers at least forty years old; almost one sixth (16.9 percent) of the total outstanding debt was owed by borrowers fifty years old or older; borrowers at least sixty years old owed about 5 percent of the total outstanding debt.

drowningin debtStudent-loan default rates have gone up dramatically in recent years. Can the system be fixed to ensure program solvency and protect borrowers?

The following story is an excerpt from Facing the Student-Debt Crisis: Restoring the Integrity of the Federal Student Loan Program.

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Student-loan default rates have gone up dramatically in recent years. Can the system be fixed to ensure program solvency and protect borrowers?



Student-loan default rates have gone up relentlessly in recent years. In 2007, the United States Department of Educa-tion (DOE) reported a two-year default rate of just 4.6 percent on loans from the fiscal year 2005 cohort of students. In 2013, the DOE reported a two-year default rate for students who began paying back loans in October 2010 of 10 percent, more than double the rate reported in 2007. Accord-ing to the DOE’s most recent report, 13.7 percent of student-loan debtors defaulted on their loans within three years after their repayment obli-gations began. For students who borrowed money to attend for-profit institutions, the rate is 19.1 percent. And, as this ar-ticle later explains, the DOE’s official student-loan default rate dramatically understates the true number of stu-dent-loan debtors who are defaulting on their loans.

Many factors have contributed to the escalating student-loan default rate in recent years. Students are borrowing more money to attend colleges or uni-versities than they did a few years ago, and many are finding it difficult to repay these larger loan obligations. A struggling economy has also contributed to the problem, as young people have struggled to find jobs that pay enough to service their student-loan obligations.

Indeed, a 2013 study by the Center for College Afford-ability and Productivity reported that nearly half of working college graduates held jobs that did not require a bachelor’s degree and 37 percent held jobs that required no more than a high school diploma. “Student-loan programs and federal assistance programs are based on some sort of implicit as-sumption that we’re training people for the jobs of the future,” a scholar associated with the Center observed, “[i]n reality, a lot of them are not.”

Some overburdened student-loan debtors have attempted to discharge their student loans in federal bankruptcy courts, but they have faced major obstacles. For one, Congress has passed a series of laws making it increasingly difficult for student-loan debtors to obtain bankruptcy relief. Unless they can show that their student loans constitute an “undue hard-ship,” student-loan debtors cannot obtain a discharge of their student-loan obligations. The federal courts have adopted a

strict standard for determining when the “undue hardship” requirement has been met, with most courts following the so-called Brunner test.

Moreover, federal guarantee agencies—the entities charged with collecting student loans in default—have attempted to persuade federal bankruptcy courts to deny bankruptcy relief

altogether to student-loan defaulters who file for bank-ruptcy. These agencies have argued that defaulters

should enroll in income-based repayment plans rather than seek a discharge of their student

loans. These plans require debtors to make monthly payments on their student loans

based on a percentage of their income for an extended period of time—typi-cally twenty to twenty-five years.

Conclusion and Recommendations The federal student-loan program was implemented in 1965 for the purpose

of “keeping the college door open to all students of ability” regardless of socio-

economic background. Consequently, student loans have been easy to obtain and

have featured low interest rates, minimum monthly payments, economic hardship defer-

ments, and, more recently, income-based repay-ment plans. Because the student-loan program lends

money to applicants without assessing their risk of default, students who are poor credit risks have received federal loans to pursue postsecondary educational opportunities. The consequences of these altruistic and well-intentioned poli-cies were predictable—heavy student debt and unacceptably high default rates. Clearly, there is now a troubling disconnect between the original purpose of the student-loan program to democratize American higher education and the fiscal policies that are necessary to ensure program solvency and protect borrowers from enslaving debt and inevitable default.

Several higher-education policy institutions have made comprehensive proposals for reforming the federal student-loan program. One proposal, which has been endorsed by several higher-education policy groups, is to extend the student-loan repayment period from ten years to twenty or twenty-five years, with loan payments based on a percentage of the borrower’s income. The Brookings Institute recently

Robert C. Cloud (left), MS ’66, EdD ’69, served as president of Lee College in Texas for ten years and as vice president and Dean at two other Texas colleges before joining the Baylor graduate faculty in 1988. He serves as a professor of higher education and as chair of the Department of Educational Administration. Richard Fossey (right), who has his JD from the University of Texas School of Law and his EdD from Harvard, is a Paul Burdin Endowed Professor of Education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Baylor Profes-sor Robert C. Cloud and

Professor Richard Fossey of the University of Louisiana at

Lafayette are two of the nation’s leading authorities on skyrocketing

student debt. Drs. Cloud and Fossey recently authored Facing the Student-Debt Crisis: Restoring the Integrity of the Federal

Student Loan Program in the prestigious Journal of College and University Law, and have agreed to let the Baylor Line

publish excerpts. You can download the entire 30-page report on our website,

where we hope you will join in the conversation on the impact of

student debt on Baylor families.



made a similar recommendation and further recommended that income-based repayment plans with twenty-fi ve-year repayment periods be the default option for all students par-ticipating in the federal student-loan program.

A discussion of these policy initiatives is beyond the scope of this article, although we are skeptical of proposals that contemplate a future in which millions of former postsecond-ary students make student-loan payments over twenty-fi ve years—the majority of most people’s working careers. Instead, we make several modest proposals that are designed to give a clearer picture of the student-loan crisis and to provide some relief for the millions of people who have become over-whelmed by staggering levels of student-loan debt.

First, we recommend that the DOE develop and publicize a student-loan default rate that provides a clearer indication of just how many people have defaulted on their student loans. As we argued earlier in this article, the DOE’s three-year window for measuring defaults fails to capture the number of people who default after the three-year measurement period ends and fails to take into account the number of people who are not making loan payments due to economic hardship deferments or other loan forbearance options. We believe the true student-loan default rate, when measured over the lifetime of students’ loan repayment periods, is at least double the DOE’s most recently reported three-year default rate, which is 13.7 percent. We believe the student-loan default rate for the for-profi t college sector is alarmingly high—40 percent or even higher.

In our view, a more transparent student-loan default rate would highlight the fact that the federal student-loan program is in crisis and threatens to undermine the national economy. Moreover, a more accurate student-loan default rate would underscore the fact that millions of people are burdened by unmanageable student-loan debt levels. The current reported rate may be lulling Congress and higher education leaders into believing the student loan program is basically healthy, which it is not.

Second, we believe Congress and the Executive Branch should take affi rmative steps to relieve the suffering of mil-lions of Americans who are struggling with high levels of student-loan debt—debt that many will never be able to repay.

What should be done? First and foremost, we believe the “undue hardship” provision in the Bankruptcy Code should be repealed, which would allow insolvent student-loan debtors to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy like any other non-secured debt. This is by no means a radical proposal. The National Bankruptcy Review Commission made this recommendation more than fi fteen years ago. No evidence has been presented that indicates that student-loan debtors would abuse the bankruptcy process if the “undue hardship” provision were eliminated. Moreover, bankruptcy courts have the authority to deny discharge if they conclude

that a student-loan debtor is using the bankruptcy process for fraudulent purposes.

To its credit, the DOE passed program integrity regula-tions intended to cut down on fraud and abuse in the for-profi t college and university industry, and the department also passed a gainful employment rule intended to remove institutions from the federal student-loan program whose graduates did not get jobs that paid well enough to allow them reasonably to pay back their student loans. Although federal courts invalidated important parts of those regulations, the DOE issued revised regulations in March 2014.

Clearly, the federal student-loan program requires major reforms if it is going to continue fulfi lling its original purpose of providing Americans with the opportunity to acquire postsecondary education regardless of their economic cir-cumstances. In our view, three major reforms are imperative: a more transparent measurement of student-loan default rates by the DOE, bankruptcy relief for insolvent and over-burdened student-loan debtors, and better regulation of the for-profi t college and university industry. BL

Default lineThe Department of Education publicly reports three-year default rates every fall on the most recent cohort of debtors. A three-year cohort default rate is the percentage of a school’s borrowers who enter repay-ment on certain Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program or William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan (Direct Loan) Program loans during a particular federal fi scal year (FY), October 1 to September 30, and default or meet other specifi ed conditions prior to the end of the second following fi scal year. In 2014, the composite three-year default rate was 13.7 percent for the cohort that began repayment in 2011, with the statewide rate for Texas at 15.9 percent.

Data for individual schools lags a bit. Other websites report Baylor’s three-year default rate of 6.5 percent in 2012, which they characterize as “average,” but a Department of Education website only provides data through FY2011 (see chart). From those numbers, it appears as if Baylor’s default rate is tending downward, but these numbers do not include student loans taken from private institutions.

Master’s and Doctor’s Degree Program Student-Loan Default Rates

Baylor 4.8 6.5 6.9SMU 4.0 6.8 5.9TCU 4.3 5.7 6.1Rice 1.3 2.9 2.1Dallas Baptist 6.9 8.3 8.2Texas A&M 4.8 5.9 5.0UT-Austin 4.7 5.5 4.7

SOURCE: WWW2.ED.GOV/OFFICES/OSFAP/DEFAULTMANAGEMENT/CDR.HTML

FY2011 FY2010 FY2009


Matt Dawson Jack Loftis Ralph Storm Mary McCall


Remembering MattProfessor Matt Dawson ’38, a towering figure in the Texas legal profession and a cherished mem-ber of the Baylor Law School family, passed away on February 17 at the age of ninety-eight. A Baylor University and Baylor Law graduate, Dawson was the director of Baylor Law’s top-ranked Practice Court program for thirteen years. His demand for excellence earned him the a�ectionate nickname “Mad Dog” among his students. Dawson also was nationally renowned for the success of his mock trial teams. As a result of his mini-trial competition innovation, Baylor Law awards the “Mad Dog”—an 18-inch bronze statuette of Dawson—to the stu-dent winner of the Bob and Karen Wortham “Mad Dog” Practice Court competition. In 2009, a life-sized bronze statue of Dawson was unveiled at the Sheila and Walter Umphrey Law Center and stands watch outside a Practice Court classroom.

LEGENDARY LOSSESThe Baylor Family bids farewell to four iconic Bears

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Matt Dawson Jack Loftis Ralph Storm Mary McCall



R . Matt Dawson was how he was listed in the law school catalog.

As students, we addressed him as Mr. Dawson. He worked us harder than we had ever worked before. He frankly scared us to death. Among ourselves, we called him Mad Dog. We told our friends stories about him, and they never be-lieved us.

You see, Mr. Dawson was a master of the art of trial advocacy. He was a Michelangelo. And we couldn’t color within the lines to save our lives. We would not even realize he had entered the practice courtroom when we’d hear that dreaded voice from the back of the room … “Naw, naw, naw, that’s not how

you do it ….”I remember it so well. I would be do-

ing my dead-level best to try the case like he taught me. But that man’s face could express disappointment as clearly as his words. And his hand slowly wiped my ineptitude from his memory. And then he would show us how to do it, and it seemed so easy for him. So perfect. It was so obvious. Why could I not seem to get it? But I tried. We all did. We wanted him to be proud of us.

And slowly, with much trial and many errors on our part, he somehow made us into trial lawyers. This place is filled with them today. For decades now, whenever we get together we find

ourselves recalling our days with Mister Dawson. We tell stories. We imitate his every word with all of its syllables … “Mister witness, don’t you know….” And always with the greatest respect. I admired him so much that I even a dopted his hair style.

I discovered later, much to my surprise, that Mad Dog was actually human. He had a big heart, a warm smile, and an engaging personality. That face could also express joy. But Becky, I’ll leave that Mr. Dawson for you.

I am not sure we really appreciated it at the time, but when we first met him, Mr. Dawson was already one of the greatest trial lawyers in Texas history.

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Dawson coached students Ken Patterson (left) and Joe Johnson (right) to first place in the 1980 National Trial Competition.

LEGENDARY LOSSES Matt Dawson Jack Loftis Ralph Storm Mary McCall

Justice Jan P. Patterson (left), Matt Dawson, and Professor James Wren (right).



He tried case after case all over the state, learning the lessons of the courtroom the hard way in front of judge and jury. He tried cases of all sorts, from personal injury to anti-trust. He had great success in will contests. He tried criminal cases, too. He became that master of the art of trial advocacy one trial at a time.

Courtroom success did not come by accident. He learned, as he often later told his students, that the lawyer who was better prepared generally won the case.

It is not surprising that his ability drew the attention of the finest trial law-yers of the day. Henry Strasburger, Joe Jamail, Jim Kronzer, and many others asked Matt to help them. He achieved the highest professional recognition possible from his peers—Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers.

In 1971, Baylor University called Matt, too. They needed a giant of the courtroom to take over the Practice Court course after Judge Frank Wil-son died. And so, a new phase of Matt Dawson’s career began. He brought the same passion and the same degree of preparation to his teaching. Professor Matt Dawson turned Practice Court into a program matched by no other law school in America.

I am privileged now to teach that course along with another of his dis-ciples, Jim Wren. I hear myself saying things that Matt pounded into me so many years ago. And he still stands watching over Practice Court. His bronze statue towers over the hallway just outside the classroom. He is there to remind us every day of what it takes to be a great lawyer like he was – his passion, his devotion to the right to trial by jury, his meticulous preparation, his fearlessness, his tenacity.

Mr. Dawson, Mad Dog, Matt: I wish you could have heard the talk around here in the last few days. There have been many voices of your protégées heard. And it was almost a chorus: I would not be where I am today without you. I am so grateful.

I don’t know if Heaven is a place where there’s much need for the trial lawyer’s talents. I suspect your answer would be that there is already perfect justice there. But, you know, maybe, just maybe some of us will need a little advocacy when it comes our time to pass through the gates. If so, I know who I want to make that final plea on my behalf.

I can just hear him.“St. Peter, don’t you know….”

—Jerry Powell

—Professor Jerry Powell, director of the Practice Court Program and the Abner V. McCall Professor of Evidence Law for the Baylor Law School, delivered this eulogy in honor of Matt “Mad Dog” Dawson.

He was always Mr. Dawson, al-though the moniker “Mad Dog”

I’m sure was intended as a compliment for his tenacious and exceptional skills as a trial lawyer. He was second to none, and although I was intimidated by Mr. Dawson as a law student, I’m not sure I ever got over the respectful fear that I had for him. I was appointed to the District Court bench in 1984 (by a Baylor grad, Mark White), and I remember telling Mr. Dawson about my appoint-ment at Homecoming that year. He sincerely expressed his congratulations, and he told me that if he had ever had aspirations to be a judge, it would have been as a trial judge. He may have just been being nice, but it sure made this young lawyer feel better about taking the bench. He is an iconic figure in the history of Baylor Law School, and in our profession, and he will not be forgotten.

—Ralph Walton, BA/JD ’72

I entered Baylor Law School in the Spring of 1970 on the combined BBA/

JD program. Matt Dawson began his Practice Court tenure in 1971 or there-abouts. We were his first Practice Court class. Russell Serafin and I were Practice

Court partners. We tried the first case under Mr. Dawson’s scrutiny. We tried the case in the morning. We tried the case in the afternoon. This went on for two consecutive weeks.

What impressed me most about Mr. Dawson was his cross examination skills. He could cross examine anyone anywhere regardless of their vocation, occupation, or profession. I will never forget the first exam he gave us at the end of the quarter. My recollection is that we had four hours to complete the exam. I don’t think a person could have finished that exam in eight hours.

Our first-born arrived in 1973. We named him Matt Mosley. That was no coincidence. Mr. Dawson inspired those of us who were his students. To me, he was always Mr. Dawson. I never had the courage or the desire to call him “Mad Dog” although I’m sure it was designed to be used in a complimentary man-ner. Mr. Dawson was the consummate professional.

—John D. Mosley, ’71, JD ’72

What do I, or any other Practice Court student from the “Mad

Dog” era, NOT remember about Matt Dawson? When he approved of my performance, I was sky high; when he disapproved, I was quickly looking for the hole beneath the rock from which I apparently crawled. Professor Dawson was preeminent among a special group of law professors who managed my metamorphosis from a law student into a lawyer. His teaching of litigation skills was without equal, but I will remember him best for how he prepared me to re-spond to difficult clients, disingenuous opposing attorneys, oppressive judges, and my own mistakes, for if I could stand strong in the face of his almost daily “correction,” I could persevere against any conflict the practice of law hurled my way. I will miss him.

—Brad Cates ’77, JD, ’80



About ten years ago, Jack Loftis called me early one morning.

I was in Los Angeles on business, and it was quite early there. The first words he spoke were, “Better get your blue suit pressed.” I knew immediately what he meant. Getting your blue suit pressed was Hillsboro-speak for getting ready for a funeral.

It turns out that Jack was facing some difficult surgery to repair a heart valve, and this was his way of getting his friends ready for the news. Those who were close to Jack knew very well that he had a traditional newspaperman’s gift for gallows humor. He joked about his medical issues, extensive as they were over his last years, and even about his own death. It was his way of dealing with difficult matters forthrightly and on his own terms.

Jack died in late December in Hous-ton at the age of eighty after a short ill-ness. His death created an outpouring of sympathy in the Baylor family but also in the Texas journalism community. His accomplishments as editor of the Hous-ton Chronicle from 1987 until 2002 were significant. Jack was honored as a Baylor Distinguished Alumnus in 1988. He served a number of years as a director of the Baylor Alumni Association and also as president of the association.

Jack worked thirty-nine years for the Houston Chronicle. He was editor emeri-tus at the time of his death. I worked with him for almost thirty of those years, serving as sports editor, manag-ing editor and then executive editor until 2003. What I remember most about Jack was a humility born of an upbringing in Hillsboro and, as a product of that, an extraordinary sense of fairness in his approach to people, to news and to life.

In 1987, the Houston Chronicle was purchased by the Hearst Corp. from the Houston Endowment. It was a time when the newspaper moved to an entirely new era in coverage and stature, especially after the closure of the Houston Post in 1995. Under Jack, the Chronicle expanded staff and opened

news bureaus in Mexico City; Bogotá, Colombia; Dallas; and South Texas, as well as expanding existing staffs in Washington and Austin. It was a good time to be in newspapers, and everyone who ever worked for Jack knew it.

I met Jack in 1974. Our friendship developed immediately. We had similar roots in terms of the families we came from, the geography of Central Texas, and, of course, Baylor. On one of the first times we had lunch, Jack shared with me

Remembering JackJack Loftis ’57, age 80, of Houston, passed away December 29, 2014. A native of Hillsboro in Central Texas, Jack worked for the Houston Chronicle for thirty-nine years, serving as editor from 1987 until his retirement in 2002, when he was named editor emeritus. Loftis guided the newspaper through fifteen years of changing ownership and technology, and an increased investment in national and interna-tional reporting that included opening bureaus throughout Texas and Latin Amer-ica. Loftis also served as a director of the Baylor Alumni Association from 1998 to 2005. Loftis played baseball as a Baylor freshman before becoming a sportswriter to pay for school, spent his early journalism career as a sportswriter, received the BAA’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1988 and the Baylor Media Award in 1997, and saw the press box at the Baylor Ballpark renamed in his honor in 2001 .

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his favorite story. And it’s one we’ve all heard, and I’ll never forget his telling it to me. It’s the story of a man sitting on a park bench. There’s a dog sitting on the ground beside him. Another man approaches, and asks if the man’s dog bites. The man on the park bench replies no. The second man sits down on the end of the bench, whereupon the dog nails the man with a sharp bite on the hand. The startled man says, “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite.” The man on the bench replies, “That’s not my dog.” I’ve thought about that lunch and that story many times over the years.

Of course, it involved Jack’s love of dogs, but it also spoke of a man with a simple and straightforward approach to life, work, and relationships. Jack had respect for everyone. I think I knew him about as well as anyone ever did. I saw him in good times and bad. I saw him make difficult decisions. He was approachable, likeable, and, by any mea-sure, he was a product of his upbringing in Central Texas. He treated everyone the same, whether that person was the president of the United States, the governor of the state of Texas, a nervous intern covering City Hall, or a street person who crept into a downtown hamburger joint and wanted the French fries Jack had left on his plate. Which is a true story, by the way. He was the most decent man I’ve ever known in my life. And as for animals, Jack and his wife, Beverly, were active for many years and in helping to raise money for local animal protection and rescue. He was every bit as kind-hearted toward animals as he was people.

During the last fifteen years of his life, Jack had several medical issues, including a stroke and heart problems that necessitated surgeries. Jack had a love of bluegrass music, and it’s not widely known but he was quite the expert about bluegrass, including its his-tory. Jack played guitar and mandolin, but gave up both after the stroke because of the reduced use of his left hand. An excellent bluegrass band played at his

memorial service in Houston, held early in January.

Jack had many stories about Baylor and Central Texas. He was a lifelong friend with the late Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, also a Hillsboro native. One of Jack’s favorite stories, told many times over the years, was his advice to country music legend Willie Nelson, born in Abbott, near Hillsboro, and also, briefly, a Baylor student. Jack and Willie were part of a daily car pool from Hill County to the Baylor campus. Near the end of the semester, Willie was at the pickup point only on rare occasions. Finally, Willie told Jack that he was quitting school to play music full time. “That’s a mistake, Willie,” Jack told him. “You’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

In Jack’s first year at Baylor, he was a member of the baseball team and let-tered as a catcher. He often noted his playing career would have been extend-ed had he been able to hit a curveball. In 2001, the press box at Baylor Ballpark was named in his honor. In his second year at Baylor, he began his newspaper career at the Hillsboro Mirror, earning an extra $5 a game covering Hillsboro Eagles’ football. He was a big sports fan and especially loved Baylor football. Until his health made the drive to Waco too difficult, he would frequently sit with former Waco Tribune-Herald sports editor Dave Campbell in the Floyd Casey Stadium press box for football games. I told several of Jack’s friends that it was a good thing he didn’t live to see this year’s Cotton Bowl. He couldn’t have taken it.

Jack had some interesting experi-ences with his medical issues. He loved to talk about what had happened to him and give details about his ailments and treatments. He seemed to have strange reactions to medications, especially the pain medications after surgery. After one of his procedures, one night he had a dream, or perhaps more accurately a vi-sion, about an argument that took place in the next room. Jack heard what was a loud disagreement, and he could relate specific dialogue between two people,

right up until the time that a woman was killed, including a description of her scream. Chronicle managing editor Tommy Miller ‘67 happened to be the next visitor to Jack, as Tommy stopped off at the hospital early the next morning on his way to work. Jack related in detail what he had heard, and he made Tommy open the door to what Jack thought was the room next door. The opened door only revealed an empty storage closet, and Jack became even more agitated. He was convinced that hospital staff had come in, cleaned up the crime scene and in fact had rearranged the structure of the room just to trick him. I think it was several weeks before Jack fully under-stood that it was a dream, and he told that story for years afterward.

In the eulogy I gave at Jack’s memo-rial service, I encouraged his friends to have a celebration of his life, but not with any fancy champagne or anything else even a bit pretentious. My plan, I told the overflow crowd, was to sometime in the next few weeks get takeout pizza. Which I did, and it was pepperoni, of course. And then I saved a piece, put it in the refrigerator, unwrapped, and let it stay overnight. Next morning, I got the cold and crusted pizza out, and I ate it with a Diet Dr Pepper. A piece of cold pizza and Diet Dr Pepper made up one of Jack’s favorite breakfasts. As I did so, I remembered that one of my dearest friends who was editor of a powerful newspaper was really a pretty simple man from Central Texas, and he enjoyed the simple things in life. For all the great things Jack did, more than anything he would want us to remember that he was just one of the guys from Hillsboro.

—Tony Pederson

—Tony Pederson, professor and The Belo Foundation Endowed Distinguished Chair in Journalism at Southern Methodist University, delivered this eulogy in honor of Jack Loftis. Pederson is the former editor of the Houston Chronicle and a member of the executive committee of the Baylor Alumni Association.



It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of Ralph

Storm. He was, without a doubt, one of the formative influences in my minis-terial career. I was born and raised in Corpus Christi, and like so many other young people, had no clue what I wanted to do fresh out of high school. I began working for a local television station as a cub reporter. It was also during that time that I announced my call to the Gospel ministry and started pastoring a small church in Alice, Texas. I loved journal-ism while in high school, and I desper-ately wanted to attend Baylor University just as Bunny Steele, my high school journalism teacher, had done. I had also heard that Baylor offered an under-graduate degree in religion, so early on I knew Baylor was the school for me.

After dabbling in junior college for a couple of years with less than stellar grades, I applied to Baylor University as a transfer student from Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. I was crushed when I received my letter of rejection. The ad-missions office basically said they were not accepting a lot of transfer students into Baylor, and most certainly not those with poor grades. Although I graduated in the upper 5 percent of my high school, I simply had not applied myself in my initial college years.

Fortunately for me, I knew people in strategic places in education and politics because of my work at the K-III TV3 television station in Corpus Christi. One of my beats was the local school board. One day not long after I was rejected by Baylor, Glenn Hutson, the president of the Corpus Christi School Board, presented his daughter at the board meeting as a recent graduate of Baylor University who would soon begin her teaching career in Corpus Christi. When the meeting adjourned I hurried to the front to speak with Mr. Hutson. I told him how happy I was for his daugh-ter, but I also informed him that I had recently been rejected by Baylor, but that I, too, would like an opportunity to graduate from Baylor, if only someone


Remembering RalphRalph Storm ‘49 passed away on January 7, 2015, four days short of his eighty-seventh birthday. Ralph served Baylor as a trustee and Regent for twenty-seven years and was known—with his late wife, Jean—for his dedicated years of service to and support of the University and its students. The Baylor Alumni Association presented Storm with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1978, and the University awarded him the Herbert H. Reynolds Award for Meritorious Service to Students in 1985 and the Founders Medallion in 2007. Baylor President and Chancellor Ken Starr said Storm’s life “reflected the heart and soul of Baylor University.” Storm made his mark in the oil and gas business and he and Jean were known as leaders at First Baptist Church in Corpus Christi.

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Ralph Storm and his wife, Jean, were devoted football fans and rarely missed a game.


was willing to give me a second chance. Hutson immediately said to me, “I know just the man you need to see. His name is Ralph Storm. You can reach him at the Storm Prichard Drilling Company. Here is his telephone number, and you are to phone him tomorrow morning.” That was my introduction to the man who would change the trajectory of my life in South Texas.

I phoned Mr. Storm the next day and he said he had been expecting my call. He then began to question me, rather sternly, as to whether or not I was seri-ous about attending Baylor, especially given that I hadn’t done so well at Del Mar College. He was nice, but there was a no-nonsense attitude about him. He said, “I’m willing to give you a chance, but you’re going to get only one chance to show me what you can do if we let you into Baylor.” He then told me to expect a letter from Herbert Reynolds, who at that time—1975—was the vice-president at Baylor. Just as Mr. Storm said, a letter with an offer of admission arrived in the mail from Dr. Reynolds a couple of weeks later. I phoned Mr. Storm once again to thank him. And once again, in a very no-nonsense tone of voice, he said this was my one and only chance to show Baylor what I could do. And then in a very reassuring tone, he told me that he would help me all he could if I were really serious about getting an educa-tion. I promised him that I would not let him down. I quit my job at the television station, resigned from my little part-time church in Alice, Texas, and put all my earthly goods into a 1975 Monte Carlo Chevrolet and headed to Waco to attend Baylor University in the fall of 1976. I was a twenty-three year-old, second- career student grateful to God and to Mr. Storm for a second chance. I did not let Mr. Storm down. I did very well at Baylor.

Initially, I did not meet Storm in Corpus Christi. The first time I laid eyes on him was at a bank in Waco. In a booming voice, he called out to me in the bank lobby and asked, “Aren’t

you Cleo LaRue?” When I said yes, he said, “I’m Ralph Storm, and I hear that you’re doing a good job in your stud-ies at Baylor. Keep up the good work.” And to my surprise, he handed me some much- needed money! He did this more than once while I was a student at Baylor. I breathed a deep sigh of relief and went back to my studies with a double determination not to let him or the people back home in Corpus Christi down. In the intervening years I would see him infrequently, and he always had a word of encouragement. After gradu-ating from Baylor, but staying in the city to pastor the Toliver Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, I would call Mr. Storm from time to time to recommend other promising young African Americans who needed a little help to get into Baylor. He would always say to me, “If they’re like you, I’m willing to take a chance on them.”

While pastoring the Toliver Chapel Church, I became politically active on behalf of Waco’s black community. Some of the Waco politicians who knew of Mr. Storm’s influence in my life went to him and asked him if he could tamp down some of my activities in the city. Mr. Storm would phone me and say, “I told them that’s why you got an education, so you could help people.” To his credit, he never tried to exert any undue pressure on me to curb my activities on behalf of Waco’s black community.

Mr. Storm will always be special in my life because he helped me at a time in my undergraduate years when I needed someone just to believe that I was worth the risk. The liabilities were clearly there and there was little to commend me in those early years, but he took a chance and stuck his neck out for me. I’m sure he did it for any number of other people. He never boasted in my presence of just how much he had done for me. And sometimes I had the feeling that what he did for me he didn’t really see as anything special. He was simply being Ralph Storm, a Christian gentleman who had dedicated his life in love, ser-

vice, and devotion to humankind. I’m so grateful that our paths crossed at a very critical time in my formative years. I’m a professor at Princeton Theological Semi-nary, where I’ve taught now for twenty years. I have traveled the world teaching and preaching, but it was Ralph Storm, forty years ago who was willing to give a young African-American student with some promise a chance. I will forever be grateful to him and I find him worthy of emulation each and every day of my life.

—Cleophus J. LaRue ’78, ’82

—Professor Cleophus J. LaRue ’78, ’82 is the Francis Landey Patton Professor of Homiletics and the chair of the Practical Theology Department at the Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

One early Sunday morning, I was out for a long run and I noticed

a low-flying twin-engine Bonanza on approach to the airport that was close to my house. The little boy in me came out and I enthusiastically waved at the airplane. Much to my surprise the pilot acknowledged me with an aggres-sive wave of his wings. I immediately thought of Ralph Storm.

I played football for Baylor, and one thing that we could expect for home games was that some time during our Friday afternoon practices, Ralph and his wife, Jean, would buzz Baylor stadium in their twin-engine Bonanza and give all of us a big wing wave. They would fly into Waco from Corpus Christi on Fridays to attend the games on Sat-urday.

Ralph did much more than that! He loved and supported Baylor University with his time, his energy, and his money. Many athletes and Baylor students ben-efited greatly from his love for and his generosity toward Baylor.

Once we were sitting next to each other on a flight to an away game, and the airline had placed a small piece of rope in a welcome sack along with




instructions on how to tie many dif-ferent knots. I noticed Mr. Storm was entertaining himself by tying differ-ent knots in the rope, and I asked him to show me how to do some. He quickly showed me several different ones and in particular a bowline knot. I still use the bowline from time to time when I need a good knot. The last knot that he showed me was a running knot. He tied it up for me and then handed it to me to loosen. I could not get it loose. I tried and tried. He finally looked at me and said, “You know why it is called a running knot? Because you have to run get a pocket knife to get it loose.”

He laughed and I laughed, and we were friends after that. Twenty-five years later, the day after the pilot waved his wings at me, I sent Mr. Storm a letter and thanked him for all he did for Baylor and especially Baylor Football and reminded him of the “running knot” story. He sent me back a reply and stated that my letter “had made his day.”

I am glad that I could make his day. Ralph Storm made many stu-dents’ lives better because of what he did for Baylor University.

—Keith Jones ’79

Not only was Ralph Storm a Baylor giant, he was a giant of a

man. There was nothing ostentatious about him. His personal appearance and lifestyle gave no hint of a man blessed with material wealth. Instead, his beautiful smile and sparkling eyes were evidence of a generous, encour-aging, loving heart. His love of the Lord Jesus radiated and impacted the lives of those of us who knew him well ,as well as those of merely casual ac-quaintance. What a gift to have called him “Friend.”

—Charles Moore ’64, DDS ’68 Virginia McComb Moore ’64

Ralph Storm and his wife were the official greeting commit-

tee for recruits at Baylor in the early ’70s. He was a big man, always had a smile for you, and loved Baylor. He was genuine and sincere when talking about Baylor being the best place to get an education and play football. I listened to him and others and never have regretted the decision. Ralph’s daughters, Kathy and Susan, were wonderful classmates, too. Ralph got us Astroturf when we needed it to compete with other SWC schools. His love of God, family, and Baylor are truly a great legacy that will live on.

—Steve Swinney ’74


Remembering MaryMary McCall, former Baylor First Lady and Founders Medallion recipient, Mary McCall passed away November 13, 2014, at the age of ninety-five. The wife of Baylor’s eleventh president (and later Chancellor) Abner V. McCall, she was well-loved for her servant heart, grace, and passion for supporting the Univer-sity’s students. Baylor President and Chancellor Ken Starr eulogized McCall on the University’s website, saying, “We celebrate today the life and legacy of Mary McCall, whose service to Baylor University was informed by her strong faith and whose dedication touched the lives of so many of our Baylor men and women. We mourn Mary’s passing, yet we rejoice at her life and Christian legacy. Mary invested in Baylor as a student (receiving her master’s degree in education), a professor’s wife, a parent, an alumna, and as First Lady, and for her truly selfless service, we give heartfelt gratitude.”

The measure of a life is not its dura-tion, but its donation.

Our former Baylor First Lady, Mary McCall, was continually in search of God’s ultimate design for her life. To all who knew her, she was “Mary,” whether you were of another generation, rank, or none.

She was the epitome of elegance and all that goes with the term… grace, beauty, compassion and generosity. Her gift of hospitality was extended to all—whether it be from the Albrittion House of the President, her home in the faculty row across Guittard Street, or the home in the Colorado mountains watching the hummingbirds—one was always made to feel special.

Mary McCall was well-known in the Waco community as a tireless participant in many charitable efforts; she could re-view a book to her peers as readily as she

His beautiful smile and sparkling eyes were evidence of a generous, encour-aging, loving heart. His love of the Lord Jesus radiated and impacted the lives of those of us who knew him well.

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could teach a school child to read.She was involved in her church al-

ways.She was a beloved Mother to their

blended families.After her move to Dallas over these

past years, she continued to create a new community of friends at Edgemere, where she lived. She brought them to worship activities at Park Cities Baptist Church and to Baylor functions.

She brought us all joy and we loved her well. Her legacy of love will forever remain.

—Bob ’50 and Carolyn Grigsby ’54 Feather

I met Mrs. McCall early in 1980 when her son-in-law, Rev. Dwayne Martin,

invited me to come down to Texas to visit Baylor as a prospective new student from Wisconsin. President and Mrs. McCall were so gracious to put us up for the night in their home and arranged a terrific campus visit for me the next day. Baylor was the clear choice for me as I later returned in the fall as a new fresh-man. At the end of the year, Mrs. McCall was gracious enough to store my belong-

ings in her attic until I could return in the fall to start my sophomore year. I tried to express my gratitude to her, and her response was as though she had no choice but to help others. She hoped I would do the same during my life time. She certainly defined graciousness and kindness.

—Sue Muller

As a child growing up on the BU campus, I was blessed to know

the McCalls. I remember this gracious Southern lady for being so kind and always taking the time to talk with me when I was with my mother or dad. My parents were in the faculty bowling league with Judge and “Miss Mary.” Oh, what great fun the faculty members had in that bowling alley. Even as kids, we ALL knew who were some of the more “competitive” faculty. The loving, kind, caring souls of both McCalls and all the faculty I got to know as a child and then when I became a student taught me some very valuable lessons of how to treat others. Mary McCall blessed me in so many ways and when I was talking to some BU students in my office this

week, they couldn’t believe I actually knew her! Once again she blessed me by sharing what a remarkable lady and amazing asset she was to Baylor and Waco. I can only imagine she is now presiding at the Baylor Round Table in heaven. God Bless the entire family.

— Paula McMullen Ray

My first job after graduating from Baylor in 1962 was teaching at

West Junior High School. How fortunate was I to have Mary teaching across the hall. She became my mentor and the person I admired so much. Her demean-or was always calm and encouraging.

—Mark Cleveland ’62

Mary McCall was a gentle, thought-ful, and graceful presence in our

Baylor community, providing a silent but attractive contribution everywhere she appeared. She made rough edges smooth.

—Daniel G. Bagby ’BS 62, MS ’64Former Baylor Trustee

Ted Adams Emeritus Professor of Pastoral Care

She was the epitome of elegance and all that goes with the term….grace, beauty, com-passion and generosity... She brought us all joy and we loved her well. Her legacy of love will forever remain.



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PRICE TAG—The

university spent

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build Floyd Casey

in 1950, and it will

take an estimated

$1.6 million to tear

it down.

ON A WARM SPRING SATURDAY morning, cars turned off Valley Mills Drive into the familiar park-ing lot, and lines of people once again snaked outside Floyd Casey Stadium. But there were far fewer people than in years past, and they were all there for a very different reason. On March 28, several hundred people attended an auction out at “The Case,” where, for rock-bottom prices, they purchased gym equipment, big-screen TVs, hot tubs, and more.

By the time the last Baylor game was played in Floyd Casey on December 7, 2013, even its most ardent supporters would have agreed that the place had seen better days. Despite numerous improvements over the years, the Bears had long outgrown their old home and were ready for a twenty-first-century facility.

When the Bears played their first game in Baylor Stadium—as it was then called—on September 30, 1950, the facility was considered cutting edge. The Lariat called the stadium elegant and ultra-modern, writing that it was “a symbol for the ever-growing and ever-powerful Baylor.” And for more than sixty years,

that symbol represented Baylor football—for better and for worse.

Throughout the years, Baylor fans lovingly complained about Floyd Casey’s inadequacies: lack of parking, too far from campus, its “concrete jungle” appearance. But as the university’s football fortunes improved under Coach Art Briles, the complaints sounded more like demands for a new facility.

If there was one event that turned the tide for The Case, it could be considered the Baylor-University of Oklahoma game on November 19, 2011, or, as many fans call it, the game that built McLane Stadium. Robert Griffin III led the Bears to a stunning upset of the then-fifth-ranked Sooners, and just like that, Baylor football’s new home became a reality.

Floyd Casey’s status remains uncertain. The Waco ISD Board of Trustees passed on an option to pur-chase the stadium and its fifty-three accompanying acres, and, according to an ordinance from the Tax Increment Financing Zone, the facility must be demol-ished by January 2016.

Just in CaseThe last days of Floyd Casey Stadium


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Documents

Baylor Line - Spring 2015